Bill Kelly on new Russell book & reopening the case
Dave Reitzes
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Dick Russell's On The Trail of the JFK Assassins, A Preview Options
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William Kelly
Oct 17 2008, 08:12 PM Post #1
Although this book is not yet available, it can be pre-ordered and
will be available soon.
On the Trail of the JFK Assassins – A Revealing Look at America's Most
Infamous Unsolved Crime, By Dick Russell (Herman Graf/Skyhorse, NY,
2008)
In his new book On the Trail of the JFK Assassins, Dick Russell recaps
his experiences and republishes important articles he wrote over the
course of decades on the JFK assassination trail. For most career
journalists, writing about the political assassinations of the Sixties
has also been the kiss of death, a subject matter that marks you, but
one you can't touch and move on to another but one that you must
follow to the end.
On the Trail of the JFK Assassins is one of two new books by Russell,
the other being Don't Start the Revolution Without Me (with Jesse
Ventura), both published by Skyhorse, who also recently reissued
Russell's Black Genius as well as a new edition of John Newman's
Oswald & the CIA.
Russell also plays a role in the production of a new web based
documentary film "The Warning," which can be previewed and ordered at
his web site [http://www.dickrussell.org/] and his books via Skyhorse
[http://www.skyhorsepublishing.com/].
Russell is also the author of Striper Wars and Eye of the Whale, about
which Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. said, "Dick Russell has done for the gray
whale what he did for the striped bass – taught us to love both the
fish and the fishermen. In a riveting tale that celebrates the history
and culture of the whale fishery, Russell guides us gently to a
consciousness of the critical importance of the gray whale's struggle
and survival to modern civilization."
Also important to our modern civilization is the legal resolution of
the assassination of President Kennedy.
While Russell is known and respected for his environmental writings,
his career has been indelibly stamped by his reporting on the Kennedy
assassination and his book The Man Who Knew Too Much is a classic of
its genre. And this book is not so much an extension as it is filling
in the gaps, sidebars and potholes along the road.
Dick Russell begins On the Trail of the JFK Assassins with his first
story on the topic, a 1975 Village Voice magazine assignment to report
on Professor Richard Popkin's then latest discoveries - new
information on Richard Case Nagel and Luis Angel Castillo and how they
fit into the assassination drama.
Nagel would become the primary subject of The Man Who Knew Too Much, a
military intelligence officer and double-agent, while Russell's
research into Castillo would take him into the MKULTRA mind control
realm of programmed assassins.
Popkin would later warn others that looking into Castillo was a
quagmire, but Russell went into the rabbit's hole and he comes out
relatively unscathed, thanks to his well honed journalistic skills
that also allow us to follow him down some pretty slippery trails,
where few others dare to go.
The reprinted articles, most of which I still have from the original
clips, stand out today as well as they did when first published,
shining even more in the light of what we've learned since then and
show how we've got to where we are today.
Although some complained that The Man Who Knew Too Much was the book
that told too much, I kind of like the idea of the reporter on the
scene providing as much information as possible, not knowing what will
become significant later on. Whereas The Man Who Knew Too Much is
required reading among JFK assassination buffs, On the Trail of the
JFK Assassins is less esoteric, and gives you enough basic background
that it isn't a prerequisite to have to read the earlier book. And On
the Trail is compact and compelling enough for ordinary people, who
aren't assassination buffs, to appreciate it, so it might even change
some mainstream thinking.
There's not much here for those who want to believe that the President
was killed by a disturbed communist, but this book will be an
adventure for those who have taken up the trail of the real assassins,
and like Dick Russell, are intent on tracking them down where ever
they are holed up.
Unlike most JFK assassination researchers, who sit back and read among
books, documents and internet sites, Russell is an investigator who
also goes out and finds witnesses and interviews them on the record.
Russell is, along with Bill Turner, Anthony Summers, Gaeton Fonzi, and
a few others, among the best JFK assassination investigators.
Entwining updated briefs between articles he wrote for the Village
Voice, Argosy, Harper's Weekly, New Times Magazine, Gallery, Boston
Magazine and High Times between 1975 and 1996, Russell weaves together
his earlier articles with the latest tidbits from the records released
under the JFK Act.
Richard Case Nagel and Luis Angel Castillo are just two of the more
complex and bizarre characters you would ever want to meet, Nagel
being a US/USSR double-agent while Castillo is a programmed zombie
with ties to Cuba who is still on the lose today.
In the course of developing the yet unfinished tales of Nagel and
Castillo, Russell visits both the CIA headquarters at Langly and the
KGB headquarters in Moscow, takes you into the home of CIA mind bender
Dr. Gottleib and attends the USA-CUBA conferences in Rio and the
Bahamas, between researchers and Cuban intelligence officers.
There's also interesting interviews with the likes of Gerry Patrick
Hemming, Loran Hall, Col. Phillip Corso, Arlen Specter, Richard
Sprague and Marina Oswald. Harry Dean gets his own chapter, "Memories
of an FBI Informant." And of course, Russell revisits Sylvia Odio, and
takes on Antonio Veciana, Maurice Bishop and John Paisley, fitting
them in as part of the Dealey Plaza puzzle.
Exploring whether Oswald was a Manchurian Candidate and programmed
assassin, Russell lays down the basic background and how he most
certainly could have been, though more likely was the programmed
patsy.
Among the articles is Russell's response to Posner, which only High
Times Magazine had the courage to publish, and which seems so passé
now and not worth bothering over, except how people like Posner can
get published when undisputed experts like Doug Horne can't.
Russell points out that those most impressed with Posner – David Wise,
William Styron and Posner all share the same publisher (Random House)
and editor (Bob Loomis) and notes how Posner's previous books include
those about Nazi leader's children, bio-assassins and Josef Mengele,
the "Angel of Death," all prepping him with a preframed governmental
view. Russell reports that Posner testified before a Senate committee
that it was "incontestable" that the U.S. military "mistakenly
released Mengele from custody in mid-1945," despite French government
documents that indicate American officials had detained and then
released Mengele again in 1947. Of course these previous assignments
gave Posner, the hired-gun lawyer, the job of closing the case on the
JFK assassination at a time when the JFK Act ordered millions of
government records released.
"Could it be that Case Closed was an effort to defuse any new
revelations that might occur as the thirtieth anniversary of the
assassination approached?" Russell rightly questions. "There was, in
fact, no similar wave of publicity accompanying the declassification
of the House Assassinations Committee's report on Oswald's activities
in Mexico City….But the corporate media are not rushing to send a team
of reporters probing these thousands of pages of fresh files. They
would prefer to let Posner spare them the time, the only casualty
being the truth of what really happened on November 22, 1963. In
reality, there may be no better case for reopening the JFK
investigation than the sham called Case Closed."
Significantly, other than Priscilla Johnson McMillan's blatantly
dishonest biography of Marina, few reporters have had access to the
accused assassin's wife, Marina Oswald Porter. Although she has
learned to distrust so many others, she trusts Russell. Besides
accurately reflecting Marina's views on things, Russell invited her to
his home and meet with a room full of lawyers who try to answer her
single question, "Is there some way to re-open the investigation?"
She did have another question for Russell that concerned Oswald's
Uniform Service ID card, which she suspected was a clue to something
important, and is a subject that deserves further attention. And
Russell tries to answer that question fairly, but as for the lawyers,
they couldn't come up with very much. Not published before, the
chapter on the Reflections of Marina Oswald Porter (Ch.31) is the most
important because it asks the most significant question about the
assassination - how do you find a way to (officially) re-open the
investigation?
Russell describes the scene, "On a Sunday afternoon, in front of a
crackling fireplace in my living room, we assembled. Jim Lesar and Dan
Alcorn, attorneys from Washington, were on hand. Gaeton Fonzi, former
investigator for Senator for Senator Schweiker and the House
Assassinations Committee, had flown up from Florida. Harvey
Silvergate, a prominent civil liberties lawyer in Cambridge was there
with his wife, as was another attorney friend, Joan Stanley. Marina
sat in a comfortable leather-backed chair…(and) began the
conversation. 'If there is no law on the books, create one, please,'
she implored the room."
"Lesar, who also oversaw the Assassinations Archives Research Center
in the nation's capitol, responded that it was difficult to get a foot
in the door on legal action because the statute of limitations had
expired in most instances. Still, he felt we had a unique opportunity
over the next several years to get a new investigation moving. The
Assassinations Records Review Board appointed by President Clinton to
examine and release most of the still-classified files also had the
power to subpoena witnesses. There is a mechanism here to enable us to
keep the issue upfront and demand more of Congress,' Lesar said."
"'Is there a King Solomon nowhere in the lawyer community to come up
with some clever thing?' Marina asked."
"Lesar then suggested a report compiled by distinguished private
citizens could be presented to an official investigative body."
"Marina turned to face Fonzi. 'Forget me, this is not a personal
vendetta,' she said. 'I'd like to figure out a more radical approach
from the legal point of view.'"
"Marina wondered about holding a trial in Texas. Lesar said, 'But you
could only try someone if you have a suspect in a conspiracy.' The
prosecutor Alcorn added would be the Dallas District Attorney, but
that office's response had always been that 'the FBI came and took all
the evidence away.' Alcorn had looked at all the federal statutes and
seen no possibilities, so Texas was realistically the only place
something could happen. 'But we don't have a suspect right now,' and
it was ineffective to bring a legal action that was not going to
proceed.'…"
"Silverglate noted that an investigative grand jury might be possible.
However, Lesar said, 'the problem is that you'd need to convince Texas
to do it.' Silverglate went on that the federal government hides
behinds its 'supremacy clause.' In other words, Congress can override
a state constitutional provision…"
" 'There's maybe another possibility,' Stanley said. 'The murder of
[police officer J.D.] Tippitt has never been solved officially. This
would keep things within the confines of Texas law.'…On what grounds
could a grand jury be convened? Were there any suspects besides
Oswald, who purportedly committed the Tippitt murder?"
"'The best evidence on a state prosecutorial level,' said Lesar,
'revolves around concealment and obstruction of justice….'"
"Elsa Dorfman, Silverglate's wife, wondered whether Marina and Mrs.
Tippitt might do a joint action to try to bring the case of the
murdered policeman into court. Lesar, though, was ultimately forced to
conclude that he did not see the legal route as feasible. A Texas
grand jury was the best possibility, but its outcome was problematical
at best. Joan Stanley added that there are many problems with a grand
jury – all the publicity around this particular case, and the evidence
being so hard to come by…."
"….And so, basically," writes Russell, "after several hours our
discussion ended not so much further along than when it began. Some of
the finest legal minds in the country had come together, with the
widow of the accused assassin, in hopes of finding some way – any way-
to reopen the case. Thirty years after the fact, it seemed pretty
hopeless, short of someone's deathbed confession. That night, a
violinist friend played for Marina. One composition he performed was
called 'Song of the Lark.' More than one of us had tears in our
eyes."
Well, now, ten years later, we have a new District Attorney in Texas,
and there are suspects other than Oswald, and the legal route that was
closed for decades is now open, if only a crack.
And in the end, the last chapter is about Doug Horne, the former Chief
Analyst for Military Records of the Assassinations Records Review
Board, whose new book on the JFK assassination medical records will be
dynamite, and should provoke a new and proper forensic autopsy that a
murdered President should have.
Russell devotes his last chapter to a conversation he had with Doug
Horne, which clearly speaks for itself, as it is a verbatim interview,
and shows why none of the existing medical records can be considered
genuine.
"Summarizing, the photographs of President Kennedy's brain, exposed by
John Stringer on November 25, were never introduced into the official
records because they showed a pattern of damage – missing tissue from
the rear of the brain – consistent with a fatal shot from the front,
and that evidence had to be suppressed. The photographs of a second
brain,…by an unknown Navy photographer, were introduced into the
official record because the brain employed in that exercise…exhibited
damage – to the to-right-side of the brain – generally consistent with
a shot from above and behind. So where did that come from?"
"An accomplished forensic pathologist who viewed the brain photos in
the archives at the request of the ARRB told is in 1996 that the brain
in these photographs…had been in a formalin solution for at least 2
weeks before being photographed….ensures it cannot possibly be the
President's brain, which was examined only 3 days after his death."
"'Shots from multiple directions' is how I would put it….I am not
convinced that Oswald shot anyone in Dealey Plaza. He was certainly
involved in something – up to his neck – and was probably being 'run'
by intelligence operatives, and perhaps even engaging in a charade by
posing as a leftist Castro sympathizer, but I am not convinced that he
shot anyone himself…"
Answering Russell's question "What does this indicate to you about the
forces behind the assassination?" Horne says, "Well, you can go two
ways. If you accept a government cover-up as a given, then it's either
a benign or a sinister one. If it's benign, then the people
engineering the cover-up weren't part of the murder plot, but they
think for one reason or another, they can't tell the truth – the truth
might endanger the country because it might trigger World War Three if
it appears, rightly or wrongly, that there was foreign involvement in
the assassination. Or, there might be a real fear that the public
would lose faith in our institutions, if we have to admit to our
citizenry that 'multiple people shot the president and we don't know
who they are and we can't catch them.' The other alternative, the
sinister one, posits that the people performing the cover-up actions –
let's say the actors on the ground, Humes and Boswell and the
photographers involved – believe that they are doing a benign cover-up
for national security reasons. But the people giving them their orders
know better, and are part of the assassination plot…I believe that the
latter scenario detailed above is the most likely one…"
Horne told Russell that what he is working on, "…is my magnum opus, a
book that will be so massive, and so detailed, that for me to get my
message out unfiltered and in an unabridged fashion, it will have to
be made available as a 'publish on demand' specialty type item sold on
the internet, and printed one copy at time….My goal is to tell the
truth as I know it, without anyone watering it down – not to make
money. My manuscript is a labor of love, and will be the sharing of an
intellectual journey with those who are captivated by the medical
evidence, and who have a love of detail…I won't be pulling any
punches, and the final section of my book will be a treatise on the
political context, and meaning, of the assassination."
While we look forward to Horne's book, we also hope that this isn't
the end of the trail of the assassins for Russell, as we haven't yet
arrived at the final destination where the full truth is known and
justice is achieved.
[William Kelly is the co-founder of the Committee for an Open Archives
(COA) and the Coalition on Political Assassinations (COPA). He can be
reached at bkj...@yahoo.com ]
This post has been edited by William Kelly: Oct 18 2008, 04:07 AM
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David Von Pein
Is there no end to the CT madness?
David Von Pein
"One of the most bizarre tales in conspiracy assassination literature, and
one that conspiracy theorists have treated very seriously, even being the
subject of one of the largest books ever written (824 pages) on the
assassination, touches on the same theme as Mark North’s Act of Treason
but is a much weaker rendition than North’s allegation. It deals with
the story of one Richard Case Nagell (aka Joseph Kramer, Joe Krane, Robert
C. Nolan) as set forth in The Man Who Knew Too Much by Dick Russell.
Nagell (a decorated army captain during the Korean War) alleges that as a
double agent assigned by the CIA to penetrate Soviet intelligence, he
learned that the Soviets became aware before American authorities did of
Oswald and former CIA employees plotting to kill Kennedy. Indeed, he
claims that because the Soviets believed that suspicion for Kennedy’s
death would be focused on them because of Oswald’s defection, they
ordered him to meet with Oswald in Mexico City and try to persuade him not
to do it. And if he failed to talk Oswald out of it, he was told to kill
Oswald. Rather than do that,* Nagell, in a notarized affidavit he signed
on November 21, 1975, claims he sent a letter to FBI Director J. Edgar
Hoover in September 1963, in which he “advised Mr. Hoover of a
conspiracy . . . involving Lee Harvey Oswald” to murder Kennedy
“during the latter part of September (1963), probably on the 26, 27, 28
or 29th,” presumably in Washington, D.C. He signed the letter “Joseph
Kramer,” one of his aliases. Apparently Nagell knew more about
Oswald’s schedule than Oswald did, since we know Oswald was on his way
to Mexico City, not Washington, D.C., in late September, with hopes to get
to Havana. It would have been rather difficult for Oswald to kill Kennedy
anywhere in the United States, even the very tip of the Florida Keys, from
Havana. Nagell has no copy of this alleged letter (one needs an original,
of course, to make a copy), and when, in 1976, author Russell sought to
find out from Congressman Donald Edwards, who was on the HSCA, whether the
FBI ever received any such letter, FBI Director Clarence Kelly wrote to
Edwards, “Mr. Nagell’s allegation is not new to the FBI. It has been
looked into on several occasions over the years . . . No record has ever
been found of receipt of his claimed September, 1963 letter.”
FBI 697
*There is no evidence other than Nagell’s word that Nagell ever met
Oswald. While incarcerated in El Paso on an attempted bank robbery charge,
he told the FBI that he had had an association with Oswald but it “was
purely social,” and he met Oswald “in Mexico City and in Texas”
(Russell, Man Who Knew Too Much, p.51). But Nagell later would say that he
met Oswald in Tokyo (Russell, Man Who Knew Too Much, pp.136, 145).
(Russell, Man Who Knew Too Much, pp.56–57, 63, 95–96, 241, 249–253,
369–370, 438) Nagell says he got no reply to his, in all probability,
nonexistent letter. On the other hand, there is a piece of circumstantial
evidence that goes in the direction of his writing such a letter. (Very,
very commonly, there can be one piece of circumstantial evidence going in
one direction on a given issue, and another piece going in an opposite
direction on the same issue.) It turns out that Nagell made the same claim
long before 1975. In a March 20, 1964, handwritten letter to J. Lee
Rankin, Warren Commission general counsel, from the El Paso jail, he asks,
“Has the Commission been advised that I informed the Federal Bureau of
Investigation in September 1963 that an attempt might be made to
assassinate President Kennedy?” (DOJCD Record 186-10001-10119, March 20,
1964) Of course, the above only helps support (but doesn’t prove)
Nagell’s claim that he wrote the letter, not that he had any basis for
what he said in the letter. After all, if we know from the evidence that
Nagell was nearly psychotic (see later), a foundationless letter to the
authorities saying that the president might be killed could have been one
manifestation of his sickness. The legend that has formed around Nagell is
that he began to suspect he was in over his head and was being set up, so
to establish an alibi for himself he decided to commit a bank robbery in
El Paso and get caught so he would be in custody at the time Kennedy was
killed. But did Nagell himself ever say this? The evidence is mixed, but
he probably did not. This apparently apocryphal story originated in an
article by William Turner in the January 1968 edition of Ramparts magazine
and has been accepted, without question, by many in the conspiracy
community. In May of 1968, New Orleans DA Jim Garrison met in New York
City with Nagell and claims in his book On the Trail of the Assassins that
Nagell told him this (Garrison, On the Trail of the Assassins,
pp.213–215). But since Garrison has little credibility, it is hard to be
sure whether Nagell told him this fable or whether Garrison was simply
parroting Turner, a former FBI agent who was assisting Garrison in his
investigation of Clay Shaw. For his part, Nagell has severely attacked
Turner, writing in 1975 that Turner “knowingly and purposefully cited
numerous lies about me” and that “h e has proven himself adept at
putting words in my mouth and misquoting his sources of information to
lend credence to his major untruths” (Dave Reitzes, “Truth or Dare:
The Lives and Lies of Richard Case Nagell,” JFK/Deep Politics Quarterly,
July 2000, p.32 footnote 78). And in an October 26, 1975, interview by
author Russell, Nagell said, “There was a reason for having myself
arrested in the manner I did, which I thought would turn into a
misdemeanor. It wasn’t because of the Kennedy assassination, in that
sense, but for a reason I’ve never disclosed to anybody in the United
States. I certainly wasn’t trying to establish an alibi, as some of
these researchers have written. I didn’t need an alibi. I was on my way
out of the country, to Mexico and then somewhere else, and I did not plan
to return” (Russell, Man Who Knew Too Much, p.446).* 698 E N D N O T E S
*The alibi story has been supported, conspiracy theorists say, by their
claim that Nagell had foreknowledge of the assassination in Dallas on
November 22, 1963. Other than Nagell’s alleged letter to Hoover that
said the assassination was going to take place in late September of 1963
in Washington, D.C., the principal source for the foreknowledge
story—the El Paso police officer who arrested Nagell, Jim Bundren—is
lacking in credibility. Bundren told Russell in a May 11, 1990, interview
that at one of Nagell’s pretrial hearings on the bank robbery charge,
Nagell told him, “Well, I’m glad you caught me. I really don’t want
to be in Dallas.” So it is not known why Nagell did what he did at the
El Paso bank. What is known is that he walked into the State National Bank
in El Paso, Texas, in the late afternoon of September 20, 1963, drew his
Colt .45, fired two shots into a wall, calmly walked out to the street,
got into his car, and started to pull out into the street to drive away
when he was apprehended by a police officer (Russell, Man Who Knew Too
Much, p.44). If you want to be arrested, you obviously don’t try to
escape. That Nagell did try to escape completely refutes the alleged
purpose he had for what he did in the bank. Nagell was charged with
attempted bank robbery,* and because his conduct was so bizarre, the judge
sent him to the U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield,
Missouri, for a psychiatric evaluation to determine if he was mentally
competent to stand trial. Nagell refused to submit to the requisite tests,
but he was found competent to stand trial. Nagell was the sole survivor of
a military plane crash in 1954 in which he sustained severe head injuries,
and his lawyers argued at his trial that he was temporarily insane when he
fired the two shots in the El Paso bank, but he was convicted by a federal
jury on May 6, 1964, and sentenced to ten years. His attorney filed an
appeal based on “newly discovered” evidence. A neurological doctor at
Walter Reed hospital in Washington, D.C., who first examined Nagell after
the plane crash said that Nagell suffered from “organic brain damage,”
which meant that his “judgment and perception of reality was seriously
disturbed so that he could not accurately differentiate right from
wrong.” His conviction was overturned on appeal in 1966, and he was
retried and convicted again. But on April 3, 1968, the U.S. Court
ofAppeals for the Fifth Circuit, finding no specific intent to rob in
Nagell’s conduct, and “strong evidence of [Nagell’s] insanity at the
time,” concluded that “the evidence introduced by the government [to
prove an attempted robbery] is not sufficient to sustain the
conviction,” and ordered Nagell’s immediate release from custody.
(Russell, Man Who Knew Too Much, pp.60–64, 107, 625, 645) Nagell has a
long history of mental illness, and his mother, brother, and former wife
all considered him to be mentally disturbed (CIA Record 104-10012-10089,
June 7, 1968). In April and May of 1962, he had checked himself into the
psychiatric ward of the VA hospital in Westwood, California, and in
December of 1962, around the time, apparently, when he says the CIA was
having him infiltrate the KGB, and the KGB wanted him to talk Oswald out
of killing Kennedy, or failing this, to kill Oswald, he had checked
himself into the Bay Pines VA hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida, totally
disoriented and complaining of “severe headaches, blackouts, and . . .
amnesia.” The clinical social worker’s report reads, in part,
“Patient feels his intentions were to go to California, but came to
Florida instead. He cannot remember any part of his trip until he arrived
in Tallahassee, where the police suggested he come to Bay Pines.” In a
note to the hospital administrator, FBI 699 When Bundren said, “What do
you mean by that?” Nagell supposedly said, “You’ll see soon
enough.” Bundren claims that when Kennedy was killed thereafter in
Dallas, what Nagell had told him bothered him, and has “ever since.”
The only problem is that when Russell first interviewed Bundren on October
21, 1975, fifteen years earlier, Bundren never said one word about what
Nagell supposedly told him, the very, very important utterance that has
bothered him “ever since” 1963. Apparently Bundren needed another
fifteen years (from 1975 to 1990) to think about it. (Russell, Man Who
Knew Too Much, pp.45, 741) *While at the El Paso county jail, Nagell told
the FBI on December 19, 1963, that “I think I had better say I met
Oswald in Mexico City and Texas and my association with him was purely
social.” An attempt was made to have Nagell elaborate, but he refused.
(FBI Record 124-10011-10289) Nagell mentioned the possibility he is in the
process of “cracking- up.” In fact, as late as September of 1963, just
before the El Paso incident, he unsuccessfully sought psychiatric care at
the VA hospital in Los Angeles yet again. (Russell, Man Who Knew Too Much,
pp.183, 265–266, 285, 430) Despite the fact that Russell’s subject,
Nagell, was a pathetic figure with severe mental problems who lived in a
world of fantasy (one of them being that in New Orleans, Oswald, Nagell
says, was “undergoing hypno-therapy” by David Ferrie and may have been
a Manchurian candidate in a “hypnotic trance” at the time he shot
Kennedy), he tells his readers that Nagell “holds a very big skeleton
key that could open the door on who was really behind the death of our
thirty- fifth president,” and many people in the pro-conspiracy
community (e.g., Bernard Fensterwald Jr., Richard Popkin, for a while Jim
Garrison, etc.) believed that Nagell, before his death in 1995, was “the
most important living witness concerning the events of November 22,
1963” (Russell, Man Who Knew Too Much, pp.47, 59). Driving the
indefatigable Russell to distraction with his vague allusions, ellipses,
and uses of indecipherable acronyms like CHAOS/XYZ and HAI/WAI, Nagell
eventually reduced Russell to sending Nagell, Russell said, “a ten page
outline of what I believed were the essential elements of his story, and
he mailed it back with numerous typed corrections” (Russell, Man Who
Knew Too Much, p.251). But as conspiracy researcher Scott Van Wynsberghe
notes, “It seems Russell saw nothing unusual in the fact that he was now
explaining to his supposed source the source’s own story—which the
source then continued to modify. Russell would argue that he was only
clarifying Nagell’s tale, but a journalist should know that, after a
point, the incomprehensibility of a story is the story. You have a bum
source” (Fourth Decade, March 1997, p.20). On January 3, 1967, Nagell
got off a letter to U.S. Senator Richard Russell in which he talked about
Oswald coming under his scrutiny in 1962 and 1963. He proceeds to tell
Russell that Oswald had no significant contact with pro-Castro elements,
or Marxist or racist groups, et cetera, nor was Oswald “an agent or
informant, in the generally accepted sense of the words, for any
investigative, police, or intelligence agency, domestic or foreign.” He
continued that Oswald was part of a conspiracy to murder Kennedy that had
nothing to do with a foreign government. He concludes, “For what little
it is apparently worth now, my opinion is that the death of President
Kennedy was indirectly, if not directly, resultant from a conspiracy and
also due in great part to the stupidity or negligence of the FBI; that Mr.
Oswald definitely was the only assassin; and that his own demise was not
attributable to any conspiracy of which I was cognizant.” (DOJCD Record
186-10001- 10118) Using Nagell’s own words, he seems to be indirectly
removing himself from consideration by conspiracy theorists as being a
player on their field. But Nagell remained, and remains, a fixture in the
conspiracy firmament. If there was anyone who had a wilder imagination
about the assassination than Richard Nagell, it was New Orleans DA Jim
Garrison, whose looney, conspiratorial theories knew no boundaries. As
indicated earlier in this endnote, in his investigation of Clay Shaw for
the murder of President Kennedy, Garrison actually flew to New York City
in May 1968. He met with Nagell on a park bench in Central Park, hoping
Nagell would help break the case wide open for him. (What a conversation
it must have been between someone almost certifiably psychotic [Nagell]
700 E N D N O T E S and someone [Garrison] symptomatically psychotic.)
But, for Garrison, Nagell answered very few questions and was deliberately
evasive, except to say, without providing any supporting evidence, that
Guy Banister, Clay Shaw, and David Ferrie were behind the assassination
and had manipulated Oswald. Nagell also refused to discuss the CIA (the
conspiratorial devil behind the assassination in Garrison’s eyes) or any
other federal agency except that he claimed he was ignored by the FBI when
he tried to warn them of Kennedy’s assassination.* Nagell, wanting to
testify, flew to New Orleans on his own before the Shaw trial in 1969, but
Garrison never called him to the stand, not only because he had nothing to
say, but also because, per Garrison, “by the time [Shaw’s attorneys]
finished with Nagell, the jury would have been left with the impression of
a crackpot” (Garrison, On the Trail of the Assassins, pp.213–216,
267). When one is a crackpot even in the eyes of someone as screwy and
erratic as Jim Garrison, it’s time for that person to go home. A
footnote to the Nagell story: The ARRB sent Nagell a letter dated October
31, 1995, requesting that he contact the board to discuss any documents or
evidence he might have in his possession relating to the assassination
(e.g., Nagell told Russell he had a Polaroid photograph of himself and
Oswald in New Orleans, that he had documentary proof of the letter he
allegedly sent to the FBI in September of 1963 warning of Kennedy’s
death, etc.). The ARRB learned that Nagell died (from natural causes) in
his Los Angeles apartment on November 1, 1995. A member of the ARRB staff,
with the assistance of Nagell’s son and niece, searched his apartment,
and footlockers of his kept in storage in Phoenix, and found none of the
items Nagell claimed he had. (Final Report of the ARRB, p.133)"
--- VINCE BUGLIOSI; Via "RECLAIMING HISTORY" (c.2007)
Robert Harris
Richard Nagel was undoubtedly, a wierdo, as people in his profession often
tend to be. But consider this, David - from a posting I made a couple
years ago:
Did Richard Nagel have foreknowledge of the assassination?
He claimed that he deliberately got himself arrested in El Paso Texas, in
order to guarantee an iron clad alibi for himself, and disassociate
himself from the upcoming assassination of President Kennedy.
To do this, he walked into an El Paso bank in Sept. of 1963, demanded $200
in traveller's checks, fired two shots into a wall, and then walked out
empty handed.
He was promptly arrested by Sheriff's deputy, Jim Bundren whom Nagel told,
that he deliberately let himself be caught. Of infinitely greater
importance, he told Bundren, "I don't want to be in Dallas next month".
Bundren's recollection was reported by Dick Russell in *The Man Who Knew
Too Much*, and confirmed by me when I phoned Bundren, back in 1995.
But was Nagel, a card carrying FPCC member, REALLY concerned about being
connected to Oswald and the assassination? Well, he was certainly worried
about something, when shortly after the assassination, in December of
1963, he filled out and signed a sworn affadavit for the FBI, stating,
(quote)
RICHARD CASE NAGELL incarcerated in the El Paso County Jail on a complaint
charging him with Bank Robbery advised that "For the record he would like
to to say that his association with Oswald (meaning LEE HARVEY OSWALD) was
purely social and that he had met him in Mexico City and in Texas"...
(unquote)
If the rest of Nagel's story is true, his relationship to Oswald was
anything but "purely social", but Nagel's purpose then, was not to set the
record straight. It was to distance himself from Oswald and remove any
possible suspicions that he might have been involved.
Robert Harris
In article
<30f87d55-85de-46bb...@k16g2000hsf.googlegroups.com>,
David Von Pein <davev...@aol.com> wrote:
> "One of the most bizarre tales in conspiracy assassination literature, and
> one that conspiracy theorists have treated very seriously, even being the
> subject of one of the largest books ever written (824 pages) on the
> assassination, touches on the same theme as Mark Northąs Act of Treason
> but is a much weaker rendition than Northąs allegation. It deals with
> the story of one Richard Case Nagell (aka Joseph Kramer, Joe Krane, Robert
> C. Nolan) as set forth in The Man Who Knew Too Much by Dick Russell.
> Nagell (a decorated army captain during the Korean War) alleges that as a
> double agent assigned by the CIA to penetrate Soviet intelligence, he
> learned that the Soviets became aware before American authorities did of
> Oswald and former CIA employees plotting to kill Kennedy. Indeed, he
> claims that because the Soviets believed that suspicion for Kennedyąs
> death would be focused on them because of Oswaldąs defection, they
> ordered him to meet with Oswald in Mexico City and try to persuade him not
> to do it. And if he failed to talk Oswald out of it, he was told to kill
> Oswald. Rather than do that,* Nagell, in a notarized affidavit he signed
> on November 21, 1975, claims he sent a letter to FBI Director J. Edgar
> Hoover in September 1963, in which he ładvised Mr. Hoover of a
> conspiracy . . . involving Lee Harvey Oswald˛ to murder Kennedy
> łduring the latter part of September (1963), probably on the 26, 27, 28
> or 29th,˛ presumably in Washington, D.C. He signed the letter łJoseph
> Kramer,˛ one of his aliases. Apparently Nagell knew more about
> Oswaldąs schedule than Oswald did, since we know Oswald was on his way
> to Mexico City, not Washington, D.C., in late September, with hopes to get
> to Havana. It would have been rather difficult for Oswald to kill Kennedy
> anywhere in the United States, even the very tip of the Florida Keys, from
> Havana. Nagell has no copy of this alleged letter (one needs an original,
> of course, to make a copy), and when, in 1976, author Russell sought to
> find out from Congressman Donald Edwards, who was on the HSCA, whether the
> FBI ever received any such letter, FBI Director Clarence Kelly wrote to
> Edwards, łMr. Nagelląs allegation is not new to the FBI. It has been
> looked into on several occasions over the years . . . No record has ever
> been found of receipt of his claimed September, 1963 letter.˛
>
> FBI 697
>
> *There is no evidence other than Nagelląs word that Nagell ever met
> Oswald. While incarcerated in El Paso on an attempted bank robbery charge,
> he told the FBI that he had had an association with Oswald but it łwas
> purely social,˛ and he met Oswald łin Mexico City and in Texas˛
> (Russell, Man Who Knew Too Much, p.51). But Nagell later would say that he
> met Oswald in Tokyo (Russell, Man Who Knew Too Much, pp.136, 145).
> (Russell, Man Who Knew Too Much, pp.5657, 63, 9596, 241, 249253,
> 369370, 438) Nagell says he got no reply to his, in all probability,
> nonexistent letter. On the other hand, there is a piece of circumstantial
> evidence that goes in the direction of his writing such a letter. (Very,
> very commonly, there can be one piece of circumstantial evidence going in
> one direction on a given issue, and another piece going in an opposite
> direction on the same issue.) It turns out that Nagell made the same claim
> long before 1975. In a March 20, 1964, handwritten letter to J. Lee
> Rankin, Warren Commission general counsel, from the El Paso jail, he asks,
> łHas the Commission been advised that I informed the Federal Bureau of
> Investigation in September 1963 that an attempt might be made to
> assassinate President Kennedy?˛ (DOJCD Record 186-10001-10119, March 20,
> 1964) Of course, the above only helps support (but doesnąt prove)
> Nagelląs claim that he wrote the letter, not that he had any basis for
> what he said in the letter. After all, if we know from the evidence that
> Nagell was nearly psychotic (see later), a foundationless letter to the
> authorities saying that the president might be killed could have been one
> manifestation of his sickness. The legend that has formed around Nagell is
> that he began to suspect he was in over his head and was being set up, so
> to establish an alibi for himself he decided to commit a bank robbery in
> El Paso and get caught so he would be in custody at the time Kennedy was
> killed. But did Nagell himself ever say this? The evidence is mixed, but
> he probably did not. This apparently apocryphal story originated in an
> article by William Turner in the January 1968 edition of Ramparts magazine
> and has been accepted, without question, by many in the conspiracy
> community. In May of 1968, New Orleans DA Jim Garrison met in New York
> City with Nagell and claims in his book On the Trail of the Assassins that
> Nagell told him this (Garrison, On the Trail of the Assassins,
> pp.213215). But since Garrison has little credibility, it is hard to be
> sure whether Nagell told him this fable or whether Garrison was simply
> parroting Turner, a former FBI agent who was assisting Garrison in his
> investigation of Clay Shaw. For his part, Nagell has severely attacked
> Turner, writing in 1975 that Turner łknowingly and purposefully cited
> numerous lies about me˛ and that łhzť has proven himself adept at
> putting words in my mouth and misquoting his sources of information to
> lend credence to his major untruths˛ (Dave Reitzes, łTruth or Dare:
> The Lives and Lies of Richard Case Nagell,˛ JFK/Deep Politics Quarterly,
> July 2000, p.32 footnote 78). And in an October 26, 1975, interview by
> author Russell, Nagell said, łThere was a reason for having myself
> arrested in the manner I did, which I thought would turn into a
> misdemeanor. It wasnąt because of the Kennedy assassination, in that
> sense, but for a reason Iąve never disclosed to anybody in the United
> States. I certainly wasnąt trying to establish an alibi, as some of
> these researchers have written. I didnąt need an alibi. I was on my way
> out of the country, to Mexico and then somewhere else, and I did not plan
> to return˛ (Russell, Man Who Knew Too Much, p.446).* 698 E N D N O T E S
> *The alibi story has been supported, conspiracy theorists say, by their
> claim that Nagell had foreknowledge of the assassination in Dallas on
> November 22, 1963. Other than Nagelląs alleged letter to Hoover that
> said the assassination was going to take place in late September of 1963
> in Washington, D.C., the principal source for the foreknowledge
> story‹the El Paso police officer who arrested Nagell, Jim Bundren‹is
> lacking in credibility. Bundren told Russell in a May 11, 1990, interview
> that at one of Nagelląs pretrial hearings on the bank robbery charge,
> Nagell told him, łWell, Iąm glad you caught me. I really donąt want
> to be in Dallas.˛ So it is not known why Nagell did what he did at the
> El Paso bank. What is known is that he walked into the State National Bank
> in El Paso, Texas, in the late afternoon of September 20, 1963, drew his
> Colt .45, fired two shots into a wall, calmly walked out to the street,
> got into his car, and started to pull out into the street to drive away
> when he was apprehended by a police officer (Russell, Man Who Knew Too
> Much, p.44). If you want to be arrested, you obviously donąt try to
> escape. That Nagell did try to escape completely refutes the alleged
> purpose he had for what he did in the bank. Nagell was charged with
> attempted bank robbery,* and because his conduct was so bizarre, the judge
> sent him to the U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield,
> Missouri, for a psychiatric evaluation to determine if he was mentally
> competent to stand trial. Nagell refused to submit to the requisite tests,
> but he was found competent to stand trial. Nagell was the sole survivor of
> a military plane crash in 1954 in which he sustained severe head injuries,
> and his lawyers argued at his trial that he was temporarily insane when he
> fired the two shots in the El Paso bank, but he was convicted by a federal
> jury on May 6, 1964, and sentenced to ten years. His attorney filed an
> appeal based on łnewly discovered˛ evidence. A neurological doctor at
> Walter Reed hospital in Washington, D.C., who first examined Nagell after
> the plane crash said that Nagell suffered from łorganic brain damage,˛
> which meant that his łjudgment and perception of reality was seriously
> disturbed so that he could not accurately differentiate right from
> wrong.˛ His conviction was overturned on appeal in 1966, and he was
> retried and convicted again. But on April 3, 1968, the U.S. Court
> ofAppeals for the Fifth Circuit, finding no specific intent to rob in
> Nagelląs conduct, and łstrong evidence of [Nagelląs] insanity at the
> time,˛ concluded that łthe evidence introduced by the government [to
> prove an attempted robbery] is not sufficient to sustain the
> conviction,˛ and ordered Nagelląs immediate release from custody.
> (Russell, Man Who Knew Too Much, pp.6064, 107, 625, 645) Nagell has a
> long history of mental illness, and his mother, brother, and former wife
> all considered him to be mentally disturbed (CIA Record 104-10012-10089,
> June 7, 1968). In April and May of 1962, he had checked himself into the
> psychiatric ward of the VA hospital in Westwood, California, and in
> December of 1962, around the time, apparently, when he says the CIA was
> having him infiltrate the KGB, and the KGB wanted him to talk Oswald out
> of killing Kennedy, or failing this, to kill Oswald, he had checked
> himself into the Bay Pines VA hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida, totally
> disoriented and complaining of łsevere headaches, blackouts, and . . .
> amnesia.˛ The clinical social workerąs report reads, in part,
> łPatient feels his intentions were to go to California, but came to
> Florida instead. He cannot remember any part of his trip until he arrived
> in Tallahassee, where the police suggested he come to Bay Pines.˛ In a
> note to the hospital administrator, FBI 699 When Bundren said, łWhat do
> you mean by that?˛ Nagell supposedly said, łYouąll see soon
> enough.˛ Bundren claims that when Kennedy was killed thereafter in
> Dallas, what Nagell had told him bothered him, and has łever since.˛
> The only problem is that when Russell first interviewed Bundren on October
> 21, 1975, fifteen years earlier, Bundren never said one word about what
> Nagell supposedly told him, the very, very important utterance that has
> bothered him łever since˛ 1963. Apparently Bundren needed another
> fifteen years (from 1975 to 1990) to think about it. (Russell, Man Who
> Knew Too Much, pp.45, 741) *While at the El Paso county jail, Nagell told
> the FBI on December 19, 1963, that łI think I had better say I met
> Oswald in Mexico City and Texas and my association with him was purely
> social.˛ An attempt was made to have Nagell elaborate, but he refused.
> (FBI Record 124-10011-10289) Nagell mentioned the possibility he is in the
> process of łcracking- up.˛ In fact, as late as September of 1963, just
> before the El Paso incident, he unsuccessfully sought psychiatric care at
> the VA hospital in Los Angeles yet again. (Russell, Man Who Knew Too Much,
> pp.183, 265266, 285, 430) Despite the fact that Russelląs subject,
> Nagell, was a pathetic figure with severe mental problems who lived in a
> world of fantasy (one of them being that in New Orleans, Oswald, Nagell
> says, was łundergoing hypno-therapy˛ by David Ferrie and may have been
> a Manchurian candidate in a łhypnotic trance˛ at the time he shot
> Kennedy), he tells his readers that Nagell łholds a very big skeleton
> key that could open the door on who was really behind the death of our
> thirty- fifth president,˛ and many people in the pro-conspiracy
> community (e.g., Bernard Fensterwald Jr., Richard Popkin, for a while Jim
> Garrison, etc.) believed that Nagell, before his death in 1995, was łthe
> most important living witness concerning the events of November 22,
> 1963˛ (Russell, Man Who Knew Too Much, pp.47, 59). Driving the
> indefatigable Russell to distraction with his vague allusions, ellipses,
> and uses of indecipherable acronyms like CHAOS/XYZ and HAI/WAI, Nagell
> eventually reduced Russell to sending Nagell, Russell said, ła ten page
> outline of what I believed were the essential elements of his story, and
> he mailed it back with numerous typed corrections˛ (Russell, Man Who
> Knew Too Much, p.251). But as conspiracy researcher Scott Van Wynsberghe
> notes, łIt seems Russell saw nothing unusual in the fact that he was now
> explaining to his supposed source the sourceąs own story‹which the
> source then continued to modify. Russell would argue that he was only
> clarifying Nagelląs tale, but a journalist should know that, after a
> point, the incomprehensibility of a story is the story. You have a bum
> source˛ (Fourth Decade, March 1997, p.20). On January 3, 1967, Nagell
> got off a letter to U.S. Senator Richard Russell in which he talked about
> Oswald coming under his scrutiny in 1962 and 1963. He proceeds to tell
> Russell that Oswald had no significant contact with pro-Castro elements,
> or Marxist or racist groups, et cetera, nor was Oswald łan agent or
> informant, in the generally accepted sense of the words, for any
> investigative, police, or intelligence agency, domestic or foreign.˛ He
> continued that Oswald was part of a conspiracy to murder Kennedy that had
> nothing to do with a foreign government. He concludes, łFor what little
> it is apparently worth now, my opinion is that the death of President
> Kennedy was indirectly, if not directly, resultant from a conspiracy and
> also due in great part to the stupidity or negligence of the FBI; that Mr.
> Oswald definitely was the only assassin; and that his own demise was not
> attributable to any conspiracy of which I was cognizant.˛ (DOJCD Record
> 186-10001- 10118) Using Nagelląs own words, he seems to be indirectly
> removing himself from consideration by conspiracy theorists as being a
> player on their field. But Nagell remained, and remains, a fixture in the
> conspiracy firmament. If there was anyone who had a wilder imagination
> about the assassination than Richard Nagell, it was New Orleans DA Jim
> Garrison, whose looney, conspiratorial theories knew no boundaries. As
> indicated earlier in this endnote, in his investigation of Clay Shaw for
> the murder of President Kennedy, Garrison actually flew to New York City
> in May 1968. He met with Nagell on a park bench in Central Park, hoping
> Nagell would help break the case wide open for him. (What a conversation
> it must have been between someone almost certifiably psychotic [Nagell]
> 700 E N D N O T E S and someone [Garrison] symptomatically psychotic.)
> But, for Garrison, Nagell answered very few questions and was deliberately
> evasive, except to say, without providing any supporting evidence, that
> Guy Banister, Clay Shaw, and David Ferrie were behind the assassination
> and had manipulated Oswald. Nagell also refused to discuss the CIA (the
> conspiratorial devil behind the assassination in Garrisonąs eyes) or any
> other federal agency except that he claimed he was ignored by the FBI when
> he tried to warn them of Kennedyąs assassination.* Nagell, wanting to
> testify, flew to New Orleans on his own before the Shaw trial in 1969, but
> Garrison never called him to the stand, not only because he had nothing to
> say, but also because, per Garrison, łby the time [Shawąs attorneys]
> finished with Nagell, the jury would have been left with the impression of
> a crackpot˛ (Garrison, On the Trail of the Assassins, pp.213216,
> 267). When one is a crackpot even in the eyes of someone as screwy and
> erratic as Jim Garrison, itąs time for that person to go home. A
> footnote to the Nagell story: The ARRB sent Nagell a letter dated October
> 31, 1995, requesting that he contact the board to discuss any documents or
> evidence he might have in his possession relating to the assassination
> (e.g., Nagell told Russell he had a Polaroid photograph of himself and
> Oswald in New Orleans, that he had documentary proof of the letter he
> allegedly sent to the FBI in September of 1963 warning of Kennedyąs
> death, etc.). The ARRB learned that Nagell died (from natural causes) in
> his Los Angeles apartment on November 1, 1995. A member of the ARRB staff,
> with the assistance of Nagelląs son and niece, searched his apartment,