44. The SV T-1 story comes from John Davis's Mafia Kingfish: Carlos Marcello and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy (New York: Signet, 1989), 13337. SV T-1 was a businessman from Darien, Georgia, who supposedly met with two of his business associates (Salvadore Pizza and Benny Capeana) at a restaurant owned by Marcello. During the dinner, SV T-1 saw a man he believed to be the restaurant's owner passing a wad of cash to a man whom SV T-1 later identified as Lee Harvey Oswald. SV T-1 told his story to a police officer named Johnny Harris. Davis lists his sources as "Interview of Joseph Albert Poretto by Special Agent Reed Jensen. Dictated 11/27/63. Interview of Mrs. Ella Frabbiele by Special Agent Reed Jensen. Dictated 11/27/63. Interview of Anthony Marcello by Special Agent Reed Jensen. Dictated 11/27/63." But when I looked at the original transcripts of these interviews on a respected independent website, they told a completely different story. Anthony Marcello, one of the managers of the restaurant/motel in question and brother of Carlos Marcello, told the FBI's Jensen that he had never seen Oswald or Ruby at his establishment. Poretto and Ella Frabbiele, a cashier at the restaurant, told Jensen the same thing-neither of them had seen Oswald at the restaurant or anyone who even resembled Oswald. See the Mary Ferrell Foundation website,

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=56999&relPageId=61,

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/show Doc.do?absPageId=673595&imageOnly=true, and

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=673594&imageOnly=true

[accessed September 27, 2011].

45. The timeline is as follows: Oswald handed out flyers at the Dumaine Street Wharf on June 16. He was fired from the Reily Company on June 19. He walked into a store owned by an anti-Castro Cuban on August 5, pretending to be anti-Castro himself. The store owner and his associates confronted Oswald on August 9, leading to a scuffle. Oswald appeared in court on August 12, pled guilty, and paid a $10 fine. Johann Rush, a cameraman for WDSU-TV, filmed Oswald as he was coming down the steps of the courthouse building. On August 13, the Times-Picayune ran a short article entitled "Pamphlet Case Sentence Given." Oswald handed out pamphlets again on August 16 in front of the International Trade Mart. WDSU-TV and WWL-TV aired brief news footage of the event. Bill Stuckey, a young reporter who hosted a radio program called "The Latin Listening Post," interviewed Oswald on August 17. Stuckey was so pleased with the interview that he invited Oswald to return on August 21 for a debate with two prominent anti-Castro Cubans. Oswald was caught off guard when Stuckey asked him about his undesirable discharge from the Marines and Russian defection. Posner, Case Closed, 13161.

46. Davis, Mafia Kingfish, 13537; Posner, Case Closed, 12130; "Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, Chapter 7: Lee Harvey Oswald: Background and Possible Motives," pp. 4067, National Archives and Records Administration website,

http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-7.html#attack

[accessed May 6, 2011]; Mark North, Act of Treason: The Role of J. Edgar Hoover in the Assassination of President Kennedy (New York: Carroll and Graf, 1991), 27677.

47. During this same period, Oswald accepted an invitation from his cousin, Eugene Murret, to give a brief speech on life in the Soviet Union at Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama. Murret was at Spring Hill studying to become a Jesuit priest. According to Murret, Oswald addressed twenty students, plus two priests, and said that he had become disillusioned with life in the USSR after realizing that the Soviet people were "dominated by roughnecks." In addition, Murret remembered that Oswald "was very vague about his leaving Russia to return to the United States." See the Warren Commission Report, vol. XXV, exhibit 2649, pp. 92022.

48. Bringuier insists that the CIA contacted him on only one occasion, after the assassination. But in the 1970s, Isidor Borja, a former DRE leader, told the House Select Committee on Assassinations that his organization briefed the CIA on the scuffle between Oswald and Bringuier. E. Howard Hunt, the former CIA officer arrested for the Watergate burglary, claimed that his agency had a close relationship with DRE. On his deathbed, without providing the necessary proof, Hunt claimed that LBJ and a handful of rogue CIA agents plotted Kennedy's murder and hired a French gunman to pull the trigger. See Ryan Singel, "Who Killed JFK? Famous Spook Outs the Conspiracy," Wired.com, April 3, 2007,

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2007/04/who_killed_jfk_/

[accessed June 3, 2011].

49. "Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, Chapter 7: Lee Harvey Oswald: Background and Possible Motives," p. 407, National Archives and Records Administration website,

http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-7.html#political

[accessed May 9, 2011]; Posner, Case Closed, 15055; Summers, Kennedy Conspiracy, 21316.

50. Marrs, Crossfire, 14749; Summers, Kennedy Conspiracy, 229; Posner, Case Closed, 139; Newman, Oswald and the CIA, 3089.

51. Bugliosi, Reclaiming History, 134849; Kurtz, JFK Assassination Debates, 163; Robert D. Morrow, First Hand Knowledge: How I Participated in the CIA-Mafia Murder of President Kennedy (New York: SPI Books, 1993); David Lee Miller interview with Robert Morrow, A Current Affair, YouTube,

http://www.youtube.com/watchTv=_3KmGN3gikA&feature=results_main&playnext=1&list=PLAEDFA01CC49C6FA5

[accessed May 9, 2011]. Gary Mack does not consider Morrow a credible source and referred us to Ulric Shannon's biting review of Morrow's book, "First Hand Knowledge: A Review,"

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/morrow.htm

[accessed September 26, 2011].

52. Ferrie was forced to relinquish his role as a CAP leader after he was accused of giving inappropriate political lectures to cadets.

53. See Dave Reitzes, "Who Speaks for Clay Shaw?" at

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/shaw1.htm, and Patricia Lambert, False Witness: The Real Story of Jim Garrison's Investigation and Oliver Stone's Film "JFK" (New York: M. Evans, 2000).

54. Posner, Case Closed, 14148; Summers, Kennedy Conspiracy, 23638.

55. Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, 15862; Posner, Case Closed, 17677; "Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives," National Archives and Records Administration website, pp. 13739,

http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/part-1c.html#odio

[accessed May 10, 2011]. Complicating the picture further, a man named Loran Eugene Hall told the FBI on September 16, 1964, that he and two of his associates (one of whom, William Seymour, bore a slight resemblance to Oswald) had visited Odio's apartment on the night in question. Yet Hall recanted his story a mere four days later, and Seymour and another man, named Lawrence Howard, later denied ever being at Odio's apartment. "Howard said Hall was a 'scatter-brain, unreliable, emotionally disturbed, and an egotistical liar.'" Also, payroll records from the Beach Welding Supplies Company of Miami Beach, Florida, show that Seymour worked 40-hour weeks between September 5 and October 10, 1963. Posner, Case Closed, 17778; Bugliosi, Reclaiming History, 1306.

56. Some assassination researchers have speculated that the man who appeared at the Cuban and Soviet embassies was not the real Oswald, but an Oswald impersonator. For example, see Jim Marrs, Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy (New York: Carroll and Graf, 1989), 19396. There is more speculation than proof about this, but as with so many other aspects of the Kennedy case, a fair person cannot make a definitive judgment.

57. Robert Blakey of the House Select Committee on Assassinations said that Oswald may have offered to kill Kennedy for Cuba while visiting the Cuban embassy in Mexico City. Blakey also said the source of this information was none other than Fidel Castro. "We had a high-echelon informant in the Communist Party," Blakey explained, "And that person had an interview with Castro, and Castro told him the story." Castro has denied ever saying anything of the sort. Telephone interview with Robert Blakey, August 10, 2011.

58. Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, 7779; Posner, Case Closed, 18086.

59. The cable also explains why officials at the U.S. embassy in Moscow decided to return Oswald's passport to him and grant his wife a visa: US EMB MOSCOW STATED TWENTY MONTHS OF REALITIES OF LIFE IN SOVIET UNION HAD CLEARLY HAD MATURING EFFECT ON OSWALD. The use of the adjective "maturing" in relation to Oswald is ironic in light of history. See "Cable Stating That Lee Oswald Who Called SovEmb 1 Oct Probably Identical to Lee Henry Oswald," October 10, 1963, NARA Record Number: 104-10015-10048, Mary Ferrell Foundation website,

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=1565&relPageId=3

[accessed January 9, 2013].

60. Oswald turned twenty-four on October 18, 1963.

61. Oleg Nechiporenko, a KGB colonel who was stationed in the USSR's Mexico City embassy at the time of Oswald's visit, believes the mystery man in the photograph "was a former American serviceman, discharged for reasons of health." "I cannot remember the date and purpose of his first visit to our embassy," Nechiporenko wrote, "but in my conversations with him, it became clear that he was psychologically disturbed. Subsequently, he came to see us several times, and the intervals between each visit increased. I remember that during each visit something was explained to him in connection with his requests, and he listened calmly and left fully satisfied." Oleg M. Nechiporenko, Passport to Assassination (Secaucus, NJ: Birch Lane Press, 1993), 175. Assassination researcher Bill Simpich told me he is "virtually certain" that the man was a KGB scientist named Yuriy Moskalev. Telephone interview with Bill Simpich, May 23, 2013.

62. Jefferson Morley, "John Brennan and the CIA's Last JFK Secrets," Huffington Post, January 11, 2013,

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jefferson-morley/brennan-confirmation-hearings_b_2441856.html

[accessed January 14, 2013].