T h e w a r n i n g s
You know how people tend to say "I told you so" after something happens and they tried to warn you about it before it did because they saw the warning signs, or had a gut feeling they tried to share with you?
Now try to imagine how JFK's security detail, or members of his administration, felt after the assassination in Dallas.
Because November 1963 was riddled with warning signs. And they were all ignored.
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Chicago, Illinois - November 2
This assassination attempt was all planned for Kennedy's visit to Chicago, on November 2, 1963.
The similarities between the Chicago plot and the Dallas plot are pretty astounding, but there is no way to know if anyone would have been the patsy there. That could have been Thomas Vallee, since he was working in a warehouse and most likely there to let the team in, so it's easy to assume he was to be the Chicago patsy. Vallee was one of the men arrested in Chicago, and whose background is similar to that of Lee Oswald, and worked a similar job in a similar location along the assigned motorcade route in Chicago. That's not a coincidence.
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Thomas Vallee
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JFK was scheduled to attend the Army – Air Force game at Soldier Field.
En route to this event, the motorcade would pass through a warehouse district where shots could easily be fired from various positions, and this is typically the kind of district a Secret Service detail would be wary of. The limo would have to make a difficult 90 degree turn which would bring it close to a stand-still, just like later in Dallas. And in such a dense area, the shooters could have easily escaped in the panicking crowd. Col. Jack Riley, who worked for Mayor Daley, was in charge of making sure certain areas along that route were secure.
A few hours later the Chicago Secret Service office received a phonecall from the FBI in Washington, warning that a group of four right-wing para-military fanatics would attempt to assassinate Kennedy en route to the game, from the overpasses on that route.
Agent J. Lloyd Stocks, who was the ranking agent in the room at the time, took this call.
The FBI had received this tip by telephone from a man identifying himself only as ‘Lee’, and they apparently couldn’t interfere with the investigation into this because it was a Secret Service matter.
At this time it was not a Federal crime to threaten the President of the United States.
Then a cleaning lady in a rooming house, in which four men were renting single rooms, found four high-powered rifles fit with telescopic sights and called the police. They in turn notified the Secret Service who then made the connection to the earlier warning from the FBI.
A 24 hour stake-out was set up, and in a hurry an arrest was made, but they couldn’t tie the suspects to the weapons found and therefore had to release them.
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If all this is true, it means there were still trustworthy FBI agents in Washington, DC and that Hoover had no choice but to give the order to prevent the assassination in Chicago. So why wasn’t the assassination in Dallas prevented?
If the informant ‘Lee’ wasn’t Lee Harvey Oswald, then who was it? And what stopped him from alerting the FBI to the Dallas plot?
If it was Lee, was his information perhaps stopped by Agent James Hosty? Or by someone else?
In the first few weeks after the assassination in Dallas, there were rumours that Lee Oswald had been a paid informant of the FBI.
Well personally I don’t believe Hosty was, in any way, a bad apple. From interviews I’ve seen him in, and what I’ve read about him, suggests he was an honest man caught in the middle while trying to do his job.
J. Gordon Shanklin, who was Hosty’s superior, is a different story. He may not have been a bad apple either, but he was certainly fearful enough of Hoover’s wrath, since Hoover had a reputation of flying off the handle, especially when the FBI was threatened in any way, to destroy possible evidence of threats to the FBI office in Dallas, or its personell. If only to keep Hoover at bay.
But it can’t be denied that Lee Oswald was in touch with the Dallas FBI.
Whether or not Hosty was his contact has yet to be proven, but since the plot in Chicago was prevented by an informant calling the FBI HQ in Washington directly, it seems strange at least that with regards to the Dallas plot the same didn’t happen.
If Oswald was indeed this ‘Lee’, and he was planted to learn all he could and make reports when possible, why not contact the FBI HQ to stop the Dallas visit? What happened? Were there people watching him at all times, or was he fearful that he might be watched at all times? Which is highly understandable. I'm open to all theories and suggestions regarding these questions.
http://22november1963.org.uk/jfk-assassination-plot-chicago
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Tampa, Florida - November 18
“The Men Who Killed Kennedy” was a 9-part series of documentaries detailing various aspects of John Kennedy’s life, and that of those who surrounded him, as well as a variety of conspiracy theories involving lots of different people.
In episode 3, “The Cover-Up”, there was mention of a plot to kill Kennedy in Tampa, Florida. A plot in which Joseph Milteer was involved.
Despite most of the information in these nine episodes being very far fatched (Beverly Oliver’s story comes to mind), the plot in Tampa was, however, very real. And this warranted a bit more research from me.
How Kennedy escaped Tampa alive is amazing, because not only was there a sniper in place, but another plot was foiled in which dynamite was to be used. The attempt with the sniper, however, caught the eye of many conspiracy researchers.
Since the similarities between Tampa and Dallas were too great to ignore, not to mention the planned plot in Chicago two weeks earlier, we can no longer accept the theory that the plot in Dallas was the work of a madman.
Below are a few excerpts from the JFK Countercoup blog. (the blog is an excellent read, by the way!)
“The Tampa Police Chief on November 18, 1963, J.P. Mullins, confirmed the existence of the plot to assassinate JFK in Tampa that day.
While all news of the threat was suppressed at the time, two small articles appeared right after JFK’s death, but even then the story was quickly suppressed. Mullins was quoted in those 42-year old articles, and he didn’t speak for publication about the threat again until he spoke with us [ibid. authors Lamar Waldron and Thom Hartmann] in 1996, confirming not just the articles but adding important new details.”
“The Tampa attempt is documented in full for the first time in any book later; but briefly, it involved at least two men, one of whom threatened to ‘use a gun’ and was described by the Secret Service as ‘white, male, 20, slender build,’ .…. According to Congressional investigators, ‘Secret Service memos’ say ‘the threat on Nov. 18, 1963 was posed by a mobile, unidentified rifleman shooting from a window in a tall building with a high powered rifle fitted with a scope.’ That was the same basic scene in Chicago and Dallas.”
“What made the attempts to kill JFK in Chicago and Tampa (and later Dallas) different from all previous threats was the involvement of Cuban suspects – and a possible Cuban agent – in each area. In addition, these multi-person attempts were clearly not the work of the usual lone, mentally ill person, but were clearly the result of coordinated planning. The Chicago and Tampa assassination attempts took place… when US officials were making plans for dealing with the possible “assassination” of “American officials” in retaliation for US actions against Castro…”
“In both the Tampa and Dallas attempts, officials sought a young man in his early twenties, white with slender build, who had been in recent contact with a small pro-Castro group called the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC). In Dallas that was Lee Harvey Oswald, but the Tampa person of interest was Gilberto Policarpo Lopez, who – like Oswald- was a former defector.”
[SOURCE http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.nl/2012/07/tampa-plot-in-retrospect.html ]
For further information regarding the bomb threats, please see:
http://www.capecodtimes.com/article/20131110/NEWS/311100346
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Some say this (see the red arrow) is Joseph Milteer standing in front of the County Records building on Houston Street, Dallas, TX
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Rose Cheramie - November 20
The following is an excerpt from 'The Assassinations: Probe Magazine on JFK, RFK, MLK, and Malcolm X.' written by Jim DiEugenio:
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On November 20, 1963, Lt. Francis Fruge of the Louisiana State Police received a phone call from Moosa Memorial Hospital in Eunice.
A Mrs. Louise Guillory, the hospital administrator told him that there was an accident victim in the emergency ward.
Guillory knew that Fruge worked the narcotics detail and she felt that the woman was under the influence of drugs.
Fruge immediately left for the hospital. When he got there he encountered a middle-aged white female sitting down in the waiting room outside emergency. There were no serious injuries; only bruises and abrasions. She was only partly coherent.
But Moosa was a private hospital and since the woman seemed bereft of funds, Guillory had called Fruge to see what he could do to help.
The woman identified herself to Fruge as Rose Cheramie.
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Rose Cheramie
Fruge had no choice at the time except to place Cheramie in the Eunice City Jail.
He then went out to attend the Eunice Police Department’s Annual Ball.
About an hour later a police officer came over to the function and told Fruge that Cheramie was undergoing withdrawal symptoms.
Fruge came back and, after recognizing the condition, called a local doctor, Dr. Derouin, from the coroner’s office.
Derouin administered a sedative via syringe to calm her down. The doctor then suggested that she be removed from the jail and taken to the state facility in Jackson. After Fruge agreed, Derouin called the facility at about midnight on the 20th and made arrangements for her delivery there. Afterwards, Fruge called Charity Hospital in Lafayette and ordered an ambulance for the transport to the hospital.
Fruge accompanied Cheramie to the hospital. And, according to his House Select Committee deposition, it was at this point that Rose began to relate her fascinating and astonishing tale. Calmed by the sedative, and according to Fruge, quite lucid, she began to respond to some routine questions with some quite unusual answers.
She told him that she was en route from Florida to Dallas with two men who looked Cuban or Italian.
The men told her that they were going to kill the president in Dallas in just a few days.
Cheramie herself was not part of the plot but apparently the men were also part of a large dope ring with Rose since Cheramie’s function was as a courier of funds for heroin which was to be dropped off to her by a seaman coming into the port of Galveston.
She was to pick up the money for the drugs from a man who was holding her child.
It seemed a quite intricate dope ring since she was then to transport the heroin to Mexico.
The two men were supposed to accompany her to Mexico but the whole transaction got short-circuited on Highway 190 near Eunice.
In the confines of a seedy bar called the Silver Slipper Lounge, Cheramie’s two friends were met by a third party.
Rose left with the two men she came with. But a short distance away from the bar, an argument apparently ensued.
And although some have written that she was thrown out of the vehicle and hit by an oncoming car, according to Fruge, Rose said that the argument took place inside the Silver Slipper, and that the two men and the manager, Mac Manual, threw her out.
While hitchhiking on the 190, she was hit by a car driven by one Frank Odom. It was Odom who then delivered her to Moosa.
As Fruge so memorably recalled to Jonathan Blackmer of the HSCA, Cheramie summed up her itinerary in Dallas in the following manner: "She said she was going to, number one, pick up some money, pick up her baby, and to kill Kennedy." (p. 9 of Fruge’s 4/18/78 deposition)
At the hospital, Cheramie again predicted the assassination. On November 22nd, several nurses were watching television with Cheramie.
According to these witnesses, "…during the telecast moments before Kennedy was shot Rose Cheramie stated to them, ‘This is when it is going to happen’ and at that moment Kennedy was assassinated. The nurses, in turn, told others of Cheramie’s prognostication."
(Memo of Frank Meloche to Louis Ivon, 5/22/67. Although the Dallas motorcade was not broadcast live on the major networks, the nurses were likely referring to the spot reports that circulated through local channels in the vicinity of the trip. Of course, the assassination itself was reported on by network television almost immediately after it happened.)
Further, according to a psychiatrist there, Dr. Victor Weiss, Rose "…told him that she knew both Ruby and Oswald and had seen them sitting together on occasions at Ruby’s club." (Ibid., 3/13/67)
In fact, Fruge later confirmed the fact that she had worked as a stripper for Ruby. (Louisiana State Police report of 4/4/67.)
Fruge had discounted Cheramie’s earlier comments to him as drug-induced delusions.
Or, as he said to Blackmer, "When she came out with the Kennedy business, I just said, wait a minute, wait a minute, something wrong here somewhere." (Fruge, HSCA deposition, p. 9)
He further described her in this manner: "Now, bear in mind that she talked: she’d talk for a while, looks like the shots would have effect on her again and she’d go in, you know, she’d just get numb, and after a while she’d just start talking again."
But apparently, at the time of the assassination Cheramie appeared fine.
The word spread throughout the hospital that she had predicted Kennedy’s murder in advance.
Dr. Wayne Owen, who had been interning from LSU at the time, later told the Madison Capital Times that he and other interns were told of the plot in advance of the assassination.
Amazingly, Cheramie even predicted the role of her former boss Jack Ruby because Owen was quoted as saying that one of the interns was told "…that one of the men involved in the plot was a man named Jack Rubinstein." (2/11/68) Owen said that they shrugged it off at the time.
But when they learned that Rubinstein was Ruby they grew quite concerned.
"We were all assured that something would be done about it by the FBI or someone. Yet we never heard anything." (Ibid.)
In fact, Cheramie’s association with Ruby was also revealed to Dr. Weiss. For in an interview with him after the assassination, Rose revealed that she had worked as a drug courier for Jack Ruby. (Memo of Frank Meloche to Jim Garrison, 2/23/67)
In the same memo, there is further elaboration on this important point: I believe she also mentioned that she worked in the night club for Ruby and that she was forced to go to Florida with another man whom she did not name to pick up a shipment of dope to take back to Dallas, that she didn’t want to do this thing but she had a young child and that they would hurt her child if she didn’t.
These comments are, of course, very revealing about Ruby’s role in both an intricate drug smuggling scheme and, at the least, his probable acquaintance with men who either had knowledge of, or were actually involved in, the assassination.
This is a major point in this story which we will return to later.
Although Fruge had discounted the Cheramie story on November 20th, the events of the 22nd made him a believer.
Right after JFK’s murder, Fruge "…called that hospital up in Jackson and told them by no way in the world to turn her loose until I could get my hands on her." (Fruge’s HSCA deposition, p. 12.) So on November 25th, Fruge journeyed up to Jackson again to talk to Cheramie.
This time he conducted a much more in-depth interview. Fruge found out that Cheramie had been traveling with the two men from Miami. He also found that the men seemed to be a part of the conspiracy rather than to be just aware of it.
After the assassination, they were supposed to stop by a home in Dallas to pick up both around eight thousand dollars plus Rose’s baby. From there Cheramie was supposed to check into the Rice Hotel in Houston under an assumed name.
Houston is in close proximity to Galveston, the town from which the drugs were coming in from.
From Houston, once the transaction was completed, the trio were headed for Mexico.
How reliable a witness was Cheramie? Extermely.
Fruge decided to have the drug deal aspect of her story checked out by the state troopers and U. S. Customs.
The officers confirmed the name of the seaman on board the correct ship coming into Galveston.
The Customs people checked the Rice Hotel and the reservations had been made for her under an assumed name.
The contact who had the money and her baby was checked and his name showed that he was an underworld, suspected narcotics dealer.
Fruge checked Cheramie’s baggage and found that one box had baby clothes and shoes inside.
Fruge flew Cheramie from Louisiana to Houston on Tuesday, the 26th.
In the back seat of the small Cessna 180, a newspaper was lying between them.
One of the headlines read to the effect that "investigators or something had not been able to establish a relationship between Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald." (Fruge’s HSCA deposition p. 19)
When Cheramie read this headline, she started to giggle.
She then added, "Them two queer sons-of-a-bitches. They’ve been shacking up for years." (Ibid.)
She added that she knew this to be true from her experience of working for Ruby.
Fruge then had his superior call up Captain Will Fritz of the Dallas Police to relay what an important witness Cheramie could be in his investigation. Fruge related what followed next: Colonel Morgan called Captain Fritz up from Dallas and told him what we had, the information that we had, that we had a person that had given us this information.
And of course there again it was an old friend, and there was a little conversation.
But anyway, when Colonel Morgan hung up, he turned around and told us they don’t want her. They’re not interested.
Fruge then asked Cheramie if she wished to try telling her tale to the FBI. She declined.
She did not wish to involve herself further. With this, the Cheramie investigation was now halted.
Rose was released and Fruge went back to Louisiana.
So, just four days after the assassination, with an extremely and provably credible witness alive, with her potentially explosive testimony able to be checked out, the Cheramie testimony was now escorted out to pasture.
Eyewitness testimony that Ruby knew Oswald, that Ruby was somehow involved in an international drug circle, that two Latins were aware of and perhaps involved in a plot to kill Kennedy, and that Ruby probably knew the men; this incredible lead—the type investigators pine for—was being shunted aside by Fritz.
It would stay offstage until Jim Garrison began to poke into the Kennedy case years later.
Rose Cheramie died as the result of a hit and run on September 4, 1965.
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Houston, Texas - November 21
Oddly enough there is very little known about this assassination attempt.
The one piece of information that keeps popping up is that there was a red 1961 Ford Falcon involved, and that it was to take place on the 21st of November, 1963.
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With there being proof that a four man team planned to assassinate JFK in Chicago, the attempt in Tampa by more than one man also being foiled, and the Rose Cheramie story later being presented of two men on their way to Dallas to assassinate Kennedy, how in the hell could the Warren Commission ever find the courage to stick to the lone nut solution?
How is it that the Katzenbach memo became the golden rule in Washington?
We know LBJ was afraid people would think the Russians, or a conspiracy of communists, killed the President, and would scream for retalliation by means of war, but the assassinaton plots outside of Dallas were fact. Eventually people would start to add things up.
If the aforementioned plots were planned to be carried out by multiple assassins, why would the Dallas assassination be done by just one man? How did they ever have the guts to sell that story to the public?
It makes no sense.
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I can't help but think ... if the Dallas plot had been foiled, or failed, where would the next attempt have taken place?
How many more venues did the assassination teams have covered?
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