Thomas Arthur Valle Chicago's Patsy in waiting? Why Dealey Plaza?
Raymond
if there was almost a competition to kill him. Within a month there
were three different attempts to kill JFK.
Another Death Plot
TIME
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,944016,00.html
Another Death Plot?
That conspiratorial army of would-be historians who specialize in the
assassination of John Kennedy may have a brand-new plot to play with.
In Chicago last week, Legal Researcher Sherman H. Skolnick filed suit
in federal district court against the National Archives and Records
Service to release certain documents. He contended that the archives
had unlawfully squirreled away the details of a hitherto unknown plot
or plots to kill J.F.K. at the Nov. 2, 1963, Army-Air Force game in
Chicago, 20 days before his assassination by Lee Harvey Oswald.
Quixotic as his quest may sound, Skolnick, who is a paraplegic, is not
a man to be taken lightly. He is a well-known courtroom gadfly with a
penchant for legal battles, and he played a key role in getting two
Illinois Supreme Court judges to resign amid charges of conflict of
interest brought by him (TIME, Aug. 29). Thus it was not surprising
that people with information about the alleged plot sought him out to
help make their case; among the informants is a former Secret Service
agent.
As Skolnick tells it, the Chicago assassination plot involved a
supposed accomplice of Oswald's by the name of Thomas Arthur Vallee
and three or four other men whose identities are uncertain. Their plan
to kill the President had to be abandoned when Vallee, a lithographer,
was picked up by Chicago police on a minor traffic violation on the
day of the game. After spotting a hunting knife on the front seat of
his car, the cops looked further and found a rifle. Vallee was put on
probation for concealing a weapon; for the traffic violation he drew a
$5 fine, which was suspended. He has since disappeared, as has the
photograph that should be attached to his arrest card.
(The committee also learned that the information the Secret Service
obtained on Vallee was not forwarded to the agents responsible for the
President's trip to Texas on November 21-22,)
Skolnick firmly believes that Oswald was somehow involved in Vallee's
alleged plot. In an effort to prove it, he wants to see certain
documents that the Warren Commission considered in making its report
and then turned over to the archives, where they are to be kept secret
for 75 years. Skolnick argues that the archives can prove that the
1962 Ford Falcon driven by Vallee was —as he believes—linked to Oswald
in some way or even registered in his name. Skolnick also maintains
that the archives have Government documents showing that Klein's
Sporting Goods Co. of Chicago had no receipt for the gun allegedly
sent to Oswald—an allegation that raises the possibility that the
weapon actually came from some other source.
The Justice Department, however, has responded to Skolnick's suit with
a "No comment," and National Archivist Marion Johnson claims that he
has "seen no evidence in the records connecting Vallee to an
assassination attempt." The Government has 60 days in which to answer
the suit
---------------
Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of
Representatives
D. Agencies and Departments of the U.S. Government performed with
varying degrees of competency in the fulfillment of their duties;
President John F. Kennedy did not receive adequate protection; a
thorough and reliable investigation into the responsibility of Lee
Harvey Oswald for the assassination was conducted; the investigation
into the possibility of conspiracy in the assassination was
inadequate; the conclusions of the investigations were arrived at in
good faith, but presented in a fashion that was too definitive
Cont'd
http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/part-1d.html
The committee was unable to determine specifically why the President's
trip to Chicago, scheduled for November 2, was canceled. The
possibilities range from the condition of his health(46) to concern
for the situation in South Vietnam following the assassination of
President Diem (47) to the threat received on October 30.(48) On that
date, the Secret Service learned that an individual named Thomas
Arthur Vallee, a Chicago resident who was outspokenly opposed to
President Kennedy's foreign policy, was in possession of several
weapons.(49) Further, Vallee's landlady reported that he had requested
time off from his job on November 2.(50) Vallee was subsequently
interviewed, surveilled and eventually arrested by the Chicago police,
who found an M-1 rifle, a handgun and 3,000 rounds of ammunition in
his automobile. (51) Vallee was released from custody on the evening
of November 2. (52)
The committee found that the Secret Service learned more about Vallee
prior to the President's trip to Dallas on November 22: he was a
Marine Corps veteran with a history of mental illness while on active
duty;(53) he was a member of the John Birch Society(54) and an
extremist in his criticism of the Kennedy administration;(55) and he
claimed to be an expert marksman.(56) Further, he remained a threat
after November 2, because he had been released from jail.(57)
The committee also learned that the information the Secret Service
obtained on Vallee was not forwarded to the agents responsible for the
President's trip to Texas on November 21-22, although it was
transmitted to Protective Research Section upon receipt on October 30.
(58) The potential significance of Vallee as a threat was illustrated
by the Secret Service's reports, which included a notation on November
27, 1963 of the similarity between his background and that of Lee
Harvey Oswald,(59) and a record of extensive, continued investigation
of Vallee's activities until 1968.(60)
In addition, the committee obtained the testimony of a former Secret
Service agent, Abraham Bolden, who had been assigned to the Chicago
office in 1963. He alleged that shortly before November 2, the FBI
sent a teletype message to the Chicago Secret Service office stating
that an attempt to assassinate the President would be made on November
2 by a four-man team using high-powered rifles, and that at least one
member of the team had a Spanish-sounding name.(61) Bolden claimed
that while he did not personally participate in surveillance of the
subjects, he learned about a surveillance of the four by monitoring
Secret Service radio channels in his automobile and by observing one
of the subjects being detained in his Chicago office.(62)
According to Bolden's account, the Secret Service succeeded in
locating and surveillance two of the threat subjects who,(63) when
they discovered they were being watched, were arrested and detained on
the evening of November 1 in the Chicago Secret Service office.(64)
The committee was unable to document the existence of the alleged
assassination team. Specifically, no agent who had been assigned to
Chicago confirmed any aspect of Bolden's version.(65) One agent did
state there had been a threat in Chicago during that period, but he
was unable to recall details.(66) Bolden did not link Vallee to the
supposed
Page 232
four-man assassination team, although he claimed to remember Vallee's
name in connection with a 1963 Chicago case. (67) He did not recognize
Vallee's photograph when shown it by the committee. (68)
The questionable authenticity of the Bolden account notwithstanding,
the committee believed the Secret Service failed to make appropriate
use of the information supplied it by the Chicago threat in early
November 1963.
Three Attempts.
1)Abraham Bolden did report of a planned attempt on the 2nd of
November in Chicago.
Thomas Arthur Vallee, a former marine who took this day off and
travelled to Chicago with a M-1 and 3000 bullets, is being arrested
but released the same day. The information was taken serious and JFK
cancelled his trip to Chicago. Later Bolden, who wondered why his
information was excluded from the WC, was arrested and had to spend a
couple of years in prison, thanks to Lee Rankin.
2)On the morning of Nov. 9, 1963 a FBI informant, William August
Somersett reports about his taped conversation with Joseph Adam
Milteer, who told him about the plan to kill JFK in Miami at the 18th
of November. According to the House Committee transcript, Milteer told
Somersett that the killing of Kennedy "was in the working," that the
president could be killed "from an office building with a high-powered
rifle," that the rifle could be "disassembled" to get it into the
building, and that "they will pick up somebody within hours afterward,
if anything like that would happen just to throw the public off."
Again it was taken seriously and security actions were taken to put
the risk to a minimum.
3)Finally we end up in Dallas Nov. 22.where President Kennedy gets
killed.
As far as I know, neither information about the Milteer remarks
apparently were passed on to Secret Service officials responsible for
the Dallas trip nor the Chicago plans.
If we believe that the first two attempts, based on the available
information we have, happened and can be considered as “real attempts”
then we could ask the following questions:
a)Do we have to consider, that there were three different groups who
had the same goal and one unfortunately was successful?
b)Or were these three groups controlled all by the same evil force?
c) If there were three diffrent groups, do we have three diffrent
motives?
If there was a connection between these three attempts, why are there
practically no links? Were those connections not worth further
investigations, after/because LHO was arrested and killed?
What about these groups and people like Milteer who threatened the
President? They were still around, could even travel to Dallas, did
their dangerousness vanished after Kennedy’s death?
Perhaps an added dimension can be : Why Dealey Plaza?
As I see it, from studying reports of the limo stopping, Kennedy
getting out to shake hands, and separation from security, and in
looking at other photos : there might have been better, more certain,
places to kill the President.
Dealey Plaza was a very special place in the history of Texas, as is
vividly described in 'Dealey Plaza, the Heart of Texas' web site. Not
only is it the historic centre of Dallas but integral in the
development of Texas. It housed at one point all the essential
buildings of early commerce, plus is the site of the home of the
founder and of the first official building, the Post Office.
The symbolism of Dealey Plaza as the place where 'the message' was
sent from is arguably a significant factor in identifying the
perpetrators.
George Bollschweiler
-------------
Thomas Arthur Valle Chicago's Patsy in waiting?
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=12867
Thomas Arthur Valle was quickly identified from intelligence sources
as an ex-Marine who was a "disaffiliated member of the John Birch
Society,"....Vallee was also descirbed as a loner, a paranoind
schizophrenic, and a gun collector. He fit perfectly the 'lone nut'
profile that would late be used fo characterize ex-Marine Lee Harvey
Oswald.
Only after two secret service agents surveilling Vallee found an M1
rifle, a carbine rifle, and twenty-five hundred rounds of ammunition,
were Chicago police officers Daniel Groth and Peter Schurla assigned
the task of surveilling Vallee on Novermber 2nd. Interestingly,
Douglass notes tha tboth of these officers were destined for
prominanat roles in police intelligence activites. In 1975, when a
reporter tried unsuccessfully to interview Peter Schurla about
Vallee's arrest, Schurla was a high-level intelligence official at
Chicago police headquarters. His companion, Daniel Groth's career on
intellignec had by then become more public and more notorious tha
Schurla's
At 4:30 A.M. on december 4, 1969, six years after the arrest of Thomas
Arthur Vallee, Sergeant Daniel Groth commanded the police team that
broke into the the Chicago aprtment of Black Panther leaders Fred
Hampton and Mark Clark. The heavily armed officers shot both men to
death. ...Groth
(later) acknowledged under oath that his team of officers had carried
out the assault of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark at the specific request
of the FBI (JFK and the Unspeakable, p. 203-204)
Douglass goes on to note, however that Northeastern Illinois Prof. dan
Stern researched Daniel groths background and found that Groth had
taken several "training leaves" from the Chicago Police department to
go to Washington D.C. where Groth' underwent speacialized
counterintelligence
training under the auspices of both the FBI and the CIA.
The Chicago Police Department and the Los Angeles Police department
seem to have had the closest ties with the CIA. They were pioneer
members of the Law Enforcemnt Intelligence Union, a CIA -police liason
program that was seen as a rival to similar and older liason-programs
that the FBI had established with most other police departments. The
LEIU was formed in 1956. This, of course, does not preclude other CIA-
Police programs, but Los Angeles and Chicago seem to stand out as the
oldest and largest.
There's lots more on this in Douglass' book. Not bad for the first
page I flipped open!
One has to wonder if Groth and Schurla knew about Vallee before they
were tipped off by the Secret Service. It might sound like too little
compartmentalization if they did, but given their earlier involvement
with the CIA, and Schurla's later involvement in polical murder, it
seems at least a possiblility.
MORE
http://karws.gso.uri.edu/Marsh/Jfk-conspiracy/Chi-plot.txt