Raleigh Connection to the JFK Assassination

[John McAdams]

http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/jfk-oswald-and-the-raleigh-connection/Content?oid=3192079

.John

--
The Kennedy Assassination Home Page
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/home.htm

[Donald Roberdeau]

On Nov 14, 6:07 pm, john.mcad...@marquette.edu (John McAdams) wrote:
> http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/jfk-oswald-and-the-raleigh-connectio...

>
> .John
>
> --
> The Kennedy Assassination Home Pagehttp://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/home.htm

Good Day.... FYI.... There are additional article key considerations
for your further reading provided by links from within the actual
article

http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/jfk-oswald-and-the-raleigh-connection/Content?oid=3192079

(QUOTE)


JFK, Oswald and the Raleigh Connection

by Randolph Benson


http://www.indyweek.com/imager/b/magnum/3192080/69fd/raleigh_phone_call_slip.jpg

The call slip showing Oswald tried to place a collect call to John
Hurt of Raleigh


It was 11:30 on a foggy night in Raleigh on Saturday, Nov. 23, 1963.
The
previous afternoon, President John F. Kennedy had been shot on the
streets of Dallas. Just a block from the North Carolina State Capitol,
at
201 Hillsborough St., Apartment No. 1 was about to be thrust into one
of
the most profound mysteries behind the assassination. And it would be
a
generation before its meaning would be understood.

That night, nearly 1,200 miles away at the Dallas Municipal Building,
Alveeta A. Treon arrived for her shift at the telephone switchboard.
Treon would relieve her co-worker, Louise Swinney, who had been given
orders by their supervisor to assist two men in listening to a call
that
would come through their switchboard. Treon assumed the men were
Secret Service. She suspected that Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused
assassin being held in the downstairs jail, would be making another
call.
He had already phoned his Russian wife, Marina, and an ACLU lawyer in
New York. This call, however, was different.

Oswald rang the switchboard at a quarter till 12, Raleigh time.
Swinney
took the call and scribbled Oswald's information as the two men
listened
in.

"I was dumbfounded at what happened next," Treon later told a former
Senate investigator. "Swinney told , 'I'm sorry, the number
doesn't answer.' Swinney then unplugged and disconnected Oswald
without ever really trying to put the call through."

Afterward, Swinney tore the sheet from her note pad and threw it into
the trash. She left, her shift having ended.

Treon retrieved the wadded piece of paper from the trash and copied
the
information onto a standard long-distance telephone call slip to save
as a
souvenir. The slip reveals that Oswald had given Treon the name "John
Hurt of Raleigh, N.C."

After the release of the Warren Report, the U.S. government's
official
version of the assassination, in 1964, a CBS poll found that more than
40
percent of Americans surveyed said there was more to the
assassination
than the U.S. government had revealed. In 1976, a Gallup Poll found
that
81 percent believed in a conspiracy. A recent CBS survey found that
90
percent of Americans reject the Warren Commission's conclusions.

In the nearly 50 years since President Kennedy's assassination,
hundreds
of respected researchers have dedicated decades of their lives in
their
search for the truth, not just about the assassination but for what
they
describe as America's hidden history: How the "official version" of
events
is promoted by the U.S. government and perpetuated by a cooperative,
if not complicit media.

Although many are professional investigators, photo analysts,
pathologists, journalists, historians or lawyers, most approach the
assassination not as a vocation but as an avocation. An engineer
conducted crucial studies of the president's autopsies. A flight
attendant
performed respected research into Oswald's ties to military
intelligence. A
high school teacher uncovered important information about the Texas
connection. And key facts about JFK's Vietnam withdrawal directive
was
revealed by a Southern California real estate agent.

Grover Proctor, a Raleigh native, is among the researchers. A
university
dean and statistical analyst, he now lives in Cary and has become
widely
recognized as a meticulous and respected researcher. Every major
discussion of the assassination that includes facts about Oswald's
call
cites his work. His website was awarded the JFK Site Award in 1997.
(Yes, there are enough websites on the assassination to justify
awards.)

In fact, because of Proctor, Oswald's attempt to reach out to John
Hurt
has become known as the Raleigh Call.

Nine years after the assassination, Proctor, then a graduate student
at
Wayne State University in Michigan, was transfixed as the Watergate
scandal unfolded on television.

"Every evening, several of my friends and I would sit glued to the
news,
fascinated by the unfolding constitutional drama," Proctor said.
"Late-
night discussions inevitably gravitated to the conspiracy being
brought to
light by the televised hearings—and to the wider subject of political
conspiracies in general."

A friend of Proctor handed him a paperback copy of A Heritage of
Stone,
a book by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison that concluded
that
the Kennedy assassination was plotted and executed by the CIA.

"Until then, I had never given the assassination a second thought,"
Proctor recalled. "I reasoned, 'They know who did it, right? What's
the
big deal?' But both Watergate and this book told me to ask, 'Could
there
have been a conspiracy in Dallas?'

"Already disturbed by the high crimes and misdemeanors of a fallen
president as a result of the Watergate scandal, I was shaken to the
core. Watergate had already convinced me that the government could
lie
to its own people. This book forced me to ask the question whether
sometimes it also kills them."

It was through the work of independent researcher Michael Canfield
that
a copy of the Raleigh Call slip first became public. He secured a copy
of
the slip, which became available as the result of a Freedom of
Information lawsuit filed by a civil rights activist, while
conducting
research for the 1975 book Coup d'Etat in America. The book, co-
authored with Alan Weberman, was the first major work to deal with
the
Raleigh Call, and the slip was reprinted in the appendix.

On the slip were two numbers attributed to a "John Hurt": one for a
John
W. Hurt, one for a John D. Hurt. Canfield called both numbers. John
W.
Hurt turned up nothing of interest. However, when Canfield spoke to
John D. Hurt, he sat stunned, silent when Hurt revealed, "I was in
the
counterintelligence corps in the Army during World War II."

That Oswald called a former military intelligence officer from jail—
only to
be assassinated by Jack Ruby a little more than 12 hours later—was
notable and, to that point, publicly undisclosed.

Proctor became aware of Oswald's attempted call while riding on a
train
from Hartford to New York in 1980. Proctor was engrossed in Anthony
Summers' book about the assassination, Conspiracy, when he came
across a short paragraph about Oswald's call from jail: "The note
preserved by Mrs. Treon reportedly shows that Oswald booked a call to
Area Code 919."

Proctor says: "I remember being pulled up short after reading that,
thinking, 'Something about that sounds familiar.' It took a few
seconds,
but then I realized the area code 919 was Raleigh, my hometown."

Proctor later dialed the first number on the phone slip and, to his
surprise, John D. Hurt answered and confirmed the revelations in
Canfield's book.

In the way in which researchers have built upon one another's work to
add to the wealth of information about the assassination, Proctor
took
the Raleigh Call a step further: Suspecting that Oswald had
intelligence
connections, he interviewed a former CIA agent.

Victor Marchetti was a 14-year veteran of the CIA who had served as
executive assistant to then-Deputy Director Richard Helms. Marchetti
had also written extensively about the Raleigh Call in The CIA and
the
Cult of Intelligence, the first book on the assassination censored by
the
U.S. government.

In an interview with Proctor, Marchetti stated that in calling Hurt,
Oswald was clearly following standard procedure for a CIA asset under
duress. This includes contacting his case officer through a "cut-out,"
an
intermediary with no direct involvement in an operation—John Hurt.

" was probably calling his cut-out. He was calling somebody who
could put him in touch with his case officer," Marchetti told Proctor.
"He
couldn't go beyond that person. There's no way he could. He just had
to
depend on this person to say, 'OK, I'll deliver the message.' Now, if
the
cut-out has already been alerted to cut him off and ignore him,
then ..."

Here is an excerpt from Proctor's interview with Marchetti:

Proctor: OK, if someone was an agent, and he was involved in
something, and nobody believes he is an agent ... He is arrested, and
trying to communicate, let's say, and he is one of you guys. What is
the
procedure?

Marchetti: I'd kill him.

Proctor: If I was an agent for the Agency, and I
was involved in something involving the law domestically and the FBI,
would I have a contact to call?

Marchetti: Yes.

Proctor: A verification contact?

Marchetti: Yes, you would.

Proctor: Would I be dead?

Marchetti: It would depend on the situation. If you get into bad
trouble,
we're not going to verify you. No how, no way.

Proctor: But there is a call mechanism set up.

Marchetti: Yes.

Proctor: So it is conceivable that Lee Harvey Oswald was ....

Marchetti: That's what he was doing. He was trying to call in and
say,
"Tell them I'm all right."

Proctor: Was that his death warrant?

Marchetti: You betcha.

Whether the switchboard operator connected Oswald's call is
irrelevant,
especially since there appeared to be government agents monitoring
the
activity. His intentions were enough. As Marchetti told Proctor:
"This
time went over the dam, whether he knew it or not, or whether
they set him up or not. He was over the dam. At this point it was
executive action." Assassination.

Proctor says he remembers thinking, as he had Marchetti on the phone:
"I have really stepped over into a place where I have NO referent at
all. I
had no background for the necessarily dirty world of spycraft. I
suppose
now, 30-plus years later, I have just about the same reaction."

Raleigh wasn't Oswald's only connection to North Carolina. Although
the
U.S. government has contended that Oswald defected to the Soviet
Union, he had been spotted at the Illusionary Warfare Training base
in
Nags Head, which instructed young idealists to be fake defectors to
the
Soviet Union.

Marchetti wrote that the program created "young men who were made to
appear disenchanted, poor, American youths who had become turned off
and wanted to see what communism was all about."

The existence of the Nags Head base was confirmed in the 2004
testimony of former CIA pilot William "Tosh" Plumlee:

"When I later learned that Oswald had been arrested
as the lone assassin, I remembered having met him on a number of
previous occasions which were connected with intelligence training
matters, first at Illusionary Warfare Training in Nags Head, North
Carolina,
then in Honolulu at radar installation and at Oahu's Wheeler Air
Force
Base, then in Dallas at an Oak Cliff safe house on North Beckley
Street
run by Alpha 66's Hernandez group, who had worked out of Miami prior
to
the assassination."

Oswald's intelligence connections were further verified in a 1975
congressional investigation.

In September of that year, U.S. Rep. Richard Schweiker was appointed
to chair the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with
Respect to Intelligence Activities. Schweiker had the credentials for
the
job: He had served on the Church Committee, which revealed gross
misconduct of the CIA, FBI and the military in their surveillance of
U.S.
citizens.

The Select Committee was tasked to investigate intelligence agencies
with respect to the JFK assassination. Afterward, Schweiker revealed:
"We do know Oswald had intelligence connections. Everywhere you look
with him, there are the fingerprints of intelligence."

A year later, Congress launched another investigation, this one by
the
House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), also charged with
probing the assassinations of JFK and the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Surell Brady was on the committee's staff and investigated the
Raleigh
Call. Brady wrote an exhaustive 28-page report outlining Canfield and
Weberman's findings. Although the report clearly states that Oswald
attempted to call a former military intelligence officer with whom he
had
no identifiable ties, that detail was omitted from the HSCA Final
Report.

The trend of ignoring provocative evidence in government
investigations
continued.

The Raleigh Call remains one of the most disturbing, unexplained and
ignored aspects of the JFK assassination. In an interview Proctor
conducted with HSCA Chief Counsel G. Robert Blakey, he reaffirmed
what
has become the last official word on Oswald's attempted call. "I
consider
it unanswered," Blakey said, "and I consider the direction in which it
went
substantiated and disturbing, but ultimately inconclusive. The bottom
line
is, it's an unanswerable mystery."

As we enter the 50th year after the assassination, expect an
onslaught
of books, television programs and movies pertaining to the
assassination.
Virtually every network will produce a show purporting to have the
definitive word on the JFK assassination. Judging from previous
efforts,
they will likely support the conclusions of the Warren Commission and
not
those of the government's more recent investigations. And odds are
good
that researchers who have uncovered key documents will be, at best,
dismissed.

You can find the enormous body of work at Andy Winiarczyk's Last
Hurrah Bookshop in Williamsport, Pa., the world's definitive book
store
devoted to the JFK assassination. The three-story converted house
reveals the massive scale of independent research: more than 2,000
titles. Of those, only a small minority reflect the Warren Report.

The rest document the indefatigable work of independent researchers
such as Proctor, whose findings have added up into a coherent and
compelling counter-narrative. "In many cases, researchers fight the
institutions for years—FOIA request after FOIA request—trying to get
one document pertaining to one tiny piece of evidence," said Andy, as
he's known among his fellow researchers. "When they finally get that
piece of information, they piece it together with their previous
research
or with the research of others, and then write a book. And while that
one book might be incomplete, taken in toto with the work of the
research community, the truth behind the assassination becomes quite
clear."

Despite the 2,000 titles at the Last Hurrah, most of the national
attention given to books about the assassination has focused on just
two works that defend the government's official version: MSNBC
contributor Gerald Posner's best-seller Case Closed, published in
1993,
and 2007's Reclaiming History by former Los Angeles prosecutor
Vincent
Bugliosi.

Posner's Case Closed was released in time for the 30th anniversary of
the
assassination. "It caught this incredible wave," Andy says. "It
appeared
on the desks of all the major media who would say, 'We don't have to
read anymore, we don't have to trouble ourselves, here's someone
who's
sorted it all out.'"

But Posner's research was selective. Although he reviewed the 26
volumes of the Warren Report, Andy says, "he found what he wished to
find. But he didn't go really much beyond that."

Nonetheless, Posner made the press rounds: 60 Minutes, network
specials, the Sunday morning political roundtables and even the
morning
shows. Posner appeared on the Today Show in the now infamous
segment "Truth or Conspiracy." Host Katie Couric proclaimed that the
three to four years Posner spent on the case amounted to "tons and
tons of research."

While Case Closed was a best-seller, Bugliosi's 1,648-page defense of
the
Warren Report hovered at No. 800 in the Amazon rankings. Yet even at
that length, the book ignores the staggering 6 million documents that
have been released under the JFK Records Act, as well as the
mountains
of independent research.

The book's dismal sales didn't dissuade media outlets from booking
its
author. A staunch supporter of the Warren Report, Bugliosi appeared
on
The Colbert Report, The Daily Show, C-Span and 20/20 to herald his
confirmation of the government's version of events—and in doing so,
marginalizing the work and evidence that counters that view.

"The dismissal and ostracizing of the pro-conspiracy group—including
independent researchers, members of Congress and congressional
investigators—continues ," Proctor says.

The media's role in perpetuating the official government version is
significant—and very effective. And for good reason: Reporters and
editors have helped the government itself.

Among the revelations of the Church Committee hearings was CIA
Document #1035-960. This document, dated Jan. 4, 1967, and marked
"PSYCH" for Psychological Warfare, directs CIA agents to counter
critics
of the Warren Report by using "liaison and friendly elite contacts
(especially politicians and editors)" and "to employ propaganda assets
to
answer and refute the attacks of the critics."

Those cozy relationships were revealed in 1977, when Washington Post
reporter Carl Bernstein—who had earned fame from his groundbreaking
Watergate coverage—wrote extensively on information released by the
Church Committee. His article detailing revelations of the committee
hearings, The CIA and the Media, appeared in the Oct. 20, 1977, issue
of
Rolling Stone. The article exposed details of Operation Mockingbird,
the
CIA's effort to control the media.

Through documentary evidence, Bernstein revealed a list of high-
profile
media organizations that willingly cooperated with the CIA: These
include
ABC, NBC, the Associated Press, Reuters, Newsweek, The Miami Herald
and even The Saturday Evening Post. "But the most valuable of these
associations, according to CIA officials, has been with The New York
Times, CBS, and Time Inc.," Bernstein wrote. Quoting an unnamed CIA
agent, Bernstein added, "One reporter is worth 20 agents."

Yet some of the most strident voices against the idea of conspiracy
have
recanted, Proctor said. Case in point: Robert MacNeil of the
MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, who recently stated in a filmed interview
for
the documentary Beyond JFK: "We've seen revealed one conspiracy after
another. Anybody would have to be a fool, nowadays, to dismiss
conspiracies. And perhaps we lived in a fool's paradise before the
Kennedy assassination."

Even New York Times columnist Tom Wicker, a former defender of the
Oswald-as-lone-nut theory, reconsidered his position. "I think
there's
enough evidence now that there's certainly doubts about that," wrote
Wicker, a North Carolina native.

There are many psychological theories that people innately need to
believe in conspiracies. However, Walt Brown, author of numerous
books
on the JFK assassination and a college history professor, offers a
counter
view: "Imagine the police come to your house to tell you that, God
forbid, your daughter has been killed. Once you get it together, you
ask,
'What happened?' Well, the cop tells you, we're not sure. It's either
a
psycho that got loose from the asylum or a bunch of Hell's Angels
that
killed her.

"In this scenario, the guy from the asylum was just one of those
fluke
things that happens: an accident. At least it wasn't systemic,
institutional and organized. Well, Lee Oswald is the accident and
conspiracy is systemic. As a father, I'm going to pray for the
accident."

John Judge, co-founder and director of the Coalition on Political
Assassinations, put it best: "The political paralysis in America is
based on
the fact that we are allowed to believe anything but to know nothing,
Martin Schotz said so perceptively in History Will Not Absolve
Us," Judge said. "And if you cannot know, you cannot act." That's
precisely why, Judge believes, the word of independent researchers is
so
important.

Will we ever know the truth? We may already. "Who is to say that,
somewhere in that morass of opinion and deception, the real answer
hasn't already been revealed?" Proctor says. "The government and the
press—by abrogating their responsibilities—have deprived us of the
normal and official venues for discerning the truth."

It's important to know the truth about the Kennedy assassination not
only to correct the historical record but to reveal the motivations
for
obscuring it in the first place. The knowledge should prompt us to be
circumspect about what we "know," and to question other official
versions of contemporary events.

"Why is it important?" Proctor asks. "For the same reason it was
important to Galileo to correct the prevailing official position that
the sun
revolved around the earth. Those who have devoted their lives,
resources and intellect to trying to uncover the truth about the
Kennedy
assassination have decided that, twice now, the U.S. government has
been less than candid about its conclusions on who killed the
President
of the United States. At the level of American politics and freedom
itself,
can there be a more worthy cause?"

______________________

Randolph Benson is an award-winning, Durham-based filmmaker. His
films
have garnered the Gold Medal in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts
and
Sciences' Student Academy Awards and a Kodak Excellence in Filmmaking
Award at the Cannes Film Festival, among others. His work has been
featured on the Bravo Network, the Independent Film Channel and UNC-
TV as well as several international channels.

His current project, The Searchers, is a portrait of researchers of
the
Kennedy assassination. The film is slated for a spring release.

A graduate of Wake Forest University and the North Carolina School of
the Arts, Benson has taught at the Center for Documentary Studies at
Duke University for more than 10 years. Contact him at
rbe...@thesearchersfilm.com

(END QUOTE)





Best Regards in Research,

Don


Donald Roberdeau
U.S.S. John F. Kennedy, CV-67, plank walker
Sooner, or later, The Truth emerges Clearly

For your key considerations + independent determinations....

Homepage: President KENNEDY "Men of Courage" speech, and
Assassination Evidence, Witnesses, Suspects + Outstanding
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http://droberdeau.blogspot.com/2009/08/1-men-of-courage-jfk-assassination_09.html

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Important information & Key Considerations, in One Convenient
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(updated map coming in 2012).... http://img690.imageshack.us/img690/2192/dpupdated110110.gif

Visual Report: "The First Bullet Impact Into President Kennedy:
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T ogether
E veryone
A chieves
M ore

For the United States:

http://www.nationalterroralert.com/advisory7regional.gif

http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/

[Canuck]

On Wednesday, November 14, 2012 3:07:40 PM UTC-8, John McAdams wrote:
> http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/jfk-oswald-and-the-raleigh-connection/Content?oid=3192079 .John -- The Kennedy Assassination Home Page http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/home.htm

How did Oswald know the two Raleigh phone numbers? Had he memorized them?
Were they included in his phone book? - prwhitmey

[jbarge]

Less important than how LHO had the phone number is the question: did this
really happen?

[Dave Reitzes]

On Wednesday, November 14, 2012 6:07:40 PM UTC-5, John McAdams wrote:
> http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/jfk-oswald-and-the-raleigh-connection/Content?oid=3192079

From Henry Hurt's (no relation) REASONABLE DOUBT (New York: Holt and Co., 1985), pp. 244-45:


<QUOTE ON>------------------------------------

A peculiar incident possibly linking Oswald to the military intelligence
was the mysterious telephone call involving Oswald in the Dallas County
Jail following his arrest. The first account that emerged from intensely
conflicting evidence was that Oswald tried to make an outgoing telephone
call to one John Hurt in the 919 area code, which is eastern North
Carolina. For years a debate continued about whether the call was really
outgoing to North Carolina or incoming to the jail, since the best
evidence was on a slip of paper written by a jail telephone operator and,
according to one version, thrown into a trash can and later retrieved by a
souvenir hunter. The evidence was tainted, to say the least, and the
contradictory testimony of the telephone operators only added to the
confusion. The speculation was that Oswald, if an agent, might have been
trying to contact his control.

When researchers finally found a John Hurt in Raleigh, North Carolina, he
proclaimed complete ignorance about the matter. He said he had never known
or heard of Oswald before the assassination and that he made no telephone
call to Oswald and, of course, had no knowledge of Oswald's trying to
telephone him.

This claim was quickly tarnished, however, when researchers discovered
that Hurt had a background in military intelligence as well as a law
degree. Hurt insisted to researchers that he had no idea why Oswald might
want to call him. That only fanned speculation that Hurt -- who perhaps
had some covert operations connection with Oswald -- was keeping the
cover. The mystery remained, even though arguments that the call was
incoming were as strong as the arguments that Oswald made the call.

John Hurt died in 1981. A few months later, his wife told the author that
Hurt had admitted the truth before he died. Terribly upset on the day of
the assassination, he got extremely drunk -- a habitual problem with him
-- and telephoned the Dallas jail and asked to speak to Oswald. When
denied access, he left his name and number. Mrs. Hurt said her husband
told her he never had any earlier contact with Oswald and had been too
embarrassed to admit that he got drunk and placed the call. In view of the
fact that Hurt's military-intelligence background appears innocent of any
deep operational connections, the account by John Hurt's wife makes as
much sense as anything else.

<QUOTE OFF>------------------------------------


David Lifton posted the following on an Internet forum in 2010:


<QUOTE ON>------------------------------------

For what its worth. . . : I called Hurt back around 1970, and spoke with
him for between 30 minutes and an hour. I believe he told me the same "I
was drunk" story--and, again "FWIW", he sounded credible (i.e., that he
was indeed drunk). I have a BASF tape of the entire conversation.
Somewhere in my collection. With regard to anything I write here, I would
defer to the tape as the better evidence. What I do remember is coming
away from the call believing I had done what I could do, pursuing this
lead, and there wasn't much to it.

<QUOTE OFF>------------------------------------


Dave