Essay/Term paper: John f kennedy

Essay, term paper, research paper:  American History

In another bizarre

twist to a mystery that has haunted Americans for more than

a quarter century, the son of a former Dallas police officer

plans to tell the world that his father was one of the assassins

of President John F. Kennedy. Ricky White, a 29-year-old,

unemployed oil equipment salesman in Midland, says he

"had no conception of ever, ever giving this story out" but

decided to do so after FBI agents began asking questions in

May 1988. "I'm telling you a story that has touched me, not

only others, and I feel uncomfortable just telling it to

strangers," White said during a recent interview with the

Austin American-Statesman. Monday in Dallas, White is

scheduled to show reports material implicating his father,

Roscoe Anthony White, in the 1963 assassination. It

suggests that White, who died in 1971, was a member of an

assassination team of three shooters, that he fired two of the

three bullets that killed the president, and that he also killed

Dallas police officer J. D. Tippit during the manhunt for Lee

Harvey Oswald. Among the material: a rifle with telescopic

sight that uses the same kind of ammunition as Oswald's gun;

records showing that Oswald and White served together in

the Marines; three faded messages that appear to be

decoded orders to kill someone in Dallas in November

1963; and a son's recollections of his father's incriminating

diary - a document that is missing. The press conference is

being sponsored by two private groups - the JFK

Assassination Information Centre of Dallas and the

Assassination Archives and Research Centre of Washington

- and some Midland Businessmen. The possibility of Ricky

White's story being a hoax - a falsehood concocted either by

Ricky or his father - has not been dismissed by the people

urging him to publicly talk about the matter. During the last

27 years, many private researchers have claimed to have

found evidence of a conspiracy, only to be proved wrong or

deceitful. Bernard Fensterwald, executive director of the

Assassination Archives and Research Centre, says if there

was a conspiracy, Ricky White may have the key. "I think

it's our best shot," he says, "and we better take it." J. Gary

Shaw, co-director of the JFK Assassination Information

Centre, says he hopes White's story will result in an

investigation of the assassination by Texas authorities. Two

Washington-based probes - the Warren Commission in

1963-64 and the House Select Committee on

Assassinations in 1976-78 failed to resolve the enigma of the

Kennedy shooting, Shaw maintains. As with previous

conspiracy theories, White's story is tantalizing, the evidence

intriguing. Yet, as with other theories, it raises more

questions than it answers -- such as: Who issued the orders

to the so-called assassination team? Why was the

assassination ordered against Kennedy? And why is Ricky

White telling this story now? AN OSWALD

CONNECTION Using clues discovered in his father's

effects and relying on available government records, Ricky

White says he has determined that Roscoe White and Lee

Harvey Oswald probably met in 1957. Ricky White's

mother, Geneva, is gravely ill and unable to be interviewed,

family members say. According to Military records, both

White and Oswald were among a contingent of U.S.

Marines, who boarded the USS Bexar in San Diego that

year for the 22-day trip to Yokosuka, Japan. In its final

report, the Warren Commission published a photo of

Oswald with other Marines in the Philippines. All but one of

the Marines was squatting on the ground. Ricky White says

his father claimed to have been the standing Marine and

claimed to have become acquainted with Oswald in Japan

and the Philippines. Military records show that Roscoe

White took frequent unexplained trips in the Pacific, and

Ricky White says that his father's diary described those as

secret intelligence assignments. It has been established in

previous investigations that Oswald was discharged in 1959

and defected to the Soviet Union. He returned to the United

States in mid-1962, settling first in Fort Worth with his

Russian-born wife, then moving to Dallas a short time later.

Military records show Roscoe White was discharged in late

1962, joining his wife and two young sons in Paris, Texas.

Ricky White says that shortly thereafter, his father moved the

family to Dallas and took a job as an insurance salesman.

MAN WITH TWO NAMES Ricky White says that two

months ago he found several faded messages in a military

weapons canister in the attic of Geneva White's parents

home in Paris. Ricky believes the messages to be decoded

cables in which Mandarin, a name he says his father was

known by, was told his next assignment would be "to

eliminate a National Security threat to worldwide peace" in

Houston, Austin, or Dallas. Another message from the same

source - "C. Bowers" of "Navy Intelligence" - identified

Dallas as the destination and provided White with a list of

contacts. It stated White had a "place hidden within the

department." The message was dated September 1963 - the

same month that Geneva White began a brief stint as a

cocktail hostess at Jack Ruby's Carousel Club in Dallas.

Ruby fatally shot Oswald two days after the Kennedy

assassination. Dallas police records show that on Oct. 7,

1963, Roscoe White joined the department as a

photographer and clerk. He did not become a patrol officer

until 1964. A staff member in the police personnel

department said recently that White's file contains no job

references. Ricky White says his father's diary referred to

several trips made during this period to a remote area in the

foothills near Van Horn, Texas. There, Roscoe White and

several others practised shooting at moving targets, Ricky

White says. Although he was younger than 3 years old,

Ricky White says he has vague memories of being taken to

Van Horn. "My impression was they (others at the Van

Horn camp) had been working with my father in the

military," Ricky White says, "because they had known each

other well when this took place." A FOOTLOCKER AND

DIARY Ricky White says that, after his grandfather died in

1982, he was given his father's footlocker, which had been

stored in the grandfather's house in Paris. The locker

contained military memorabilia, a Marine uniform, a safe

deposit box key and a black leather-bound diary with gold

trim that detailed Roscoe White's life. As he and his mother

read the diary, Ricky White says they found passages that

implicated Roscoe White in the Kennedy assassination. "My

mother and I cried together," he says, "because it hurt very

deeply to learn what I know now. It hurt so much because

the man I had known couldn't have fired those shots. It took

this investigation to be able to learn it's true. And my family's

given a part of themselves to tell the story." From the diary

he says he learned the significance of the hunting rifle his

father gave him: a 7.65mm Mauser with telescopic sight, an

Argentine rifle that shoots round-nose, elongated bullets -

projectiles that closely resemble those of a

Mannlicher-Carcano, an Italian rifle that Oswald was

accused of using. After reading the diary, White says he was

convinced his father was one of three assassins who fired six

shots from Mauser rifles into the president's open top

limousine in Dealey Plaza. Roscoe White shot from behind a

fence atop a grassy knoll to the right and front of the

limousine, his son says. Two other marksmen were in the

Texas School Book Depository and Records buildings

behind the vehicle. Three shots struck Kennedy; a fourth

wounded Texas Gov. John Connally. Ricky White says the

two shots that his father fired both struck Kennedy: the first

in the throat; the second, and last of the shots fired, in the

head. Oswald, Ricky White says, knew of the plot, but did

not fire a shot. He had been instructed to bring his rifle to the

Book Depository, where he worked, and to build a sniper's

nest of book boxes near the sixth floor window, from which

he was accused of firing all the fatal shots, Ricky White says.

Ricky White says the diary referred to the other shooters

only by code names: Sol in the Records building; and

Lebanon in the Texas School Book Depository. The diary

indicated each of the three riflemen was accompanied by an

assistant who disassembled the rifles after the shooting and

carried them out of the area, Ricky White says. According

to the diary, Ricky White says, his father was to escape with

Oswald by riding to Red Bird Airport in South Dallas in a

city police car driven by a friend and fellow officer who did

not know what was happening. That officer, Ricky White

says, was J. D. Tippit, who was shot to death at 10th Street

and Patton Avenue in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas about

45 minutes after Kennedy was shot. Oswald was seen

running from the scene of that shooting. Ricky White says his

father wrote that, as they drove south, the unsuspecting

officer began to realize what White and Oswald were

involved in. Oswald panicked and jumped from the car.

When the officer insisted on "turning in" White, White got out

of the car and shot the officer, Ricky White says. "I killed an

officer at 10th and Patton," Ricky White quotes the diary as

saying. Less than a half hour later, Oswald was arrested in

the Texas Theatre on West Jefferson Boulevard in Oak Cliff.

He had a .38- calibre revolver police said was the murder

weapon. Murder charges against Oswald in connection with

Tippit's death were filed before he was charged with

Kennedy's death. Whether the revolver found in Oswald's

possession was actually the weapon that killed Tippit has

been a matter of dispute in several government

investigations. Ricky White says that shortly after the

assassination, his father sent the family to Paris and that he

and other members of the assassination team used a

"hideaway house" in Dripping Springs. He says that, among

his father's effects, he found a third decoded message, dated

December 1963, that advised his father to "stay within

department, witnesses have eyes, ears and mouths....The

men+will be in to cover up all misleading evidence soon."

That same month President Lyndon Johnson named Chief

Justice Earl Warren to head a commission to investigate the

assassination. The Warren Commission concluded in

September 1964 that Oswald acted alone in killing both

Kennedy and Tippit. Police records show that on Oct. 19,

1965, Roscoe White quit the Dallas Police Department and

became manager of a Dallas area drug store. During the next

six years, he switched jobs several times, finally working as a

foreman at M&M Equipment Co., in East Dallas. FAMILY

TROUBLE AND DEATH By early 1970, Roscoe and

Geneva White were a deeply troubled couple and sought

help, said the Rev. Jack Shaw, their Baptist minister in

Dallas. During a recent interview with the

American-Statesman, Shaw said Roscoe White told him at

the time that he and his family were "in danger." White

confessed to leading "a double life," the minister says, "and I

knew something was not right, something strange was going

on." Shaw says that within the last two years he tape

recorded a number of counselling sessions with Geneva

White about her recollection of what she believed to be her

former husband's role in assassinations. Shaw, who is very

guarded in talking about the case, says Ricky White has only

a small portion of the full story, which he says "will knock

your eyes out." Shaw says he met with the Whites several

times in 1970-71, but the Kennedy assassination was not

mentioned. In 1971, Roscoe White was fatally injured in an

explosive fire at M&M Equipment. Before White died,

Shaw talked with him in the hospital. He recalls White saying

he didn't think the fire was an accident - that he had seen a

man running away just before the fire. After the funeral,

Geneva White moved her family back to Paris. There, about

four years later, the White home was burglarized and some

of Roscoe White's personal possessions were taken, Ricky

White says. Police captured the two burglars and returned

the possessions which included some of Roscoe White's

photos - among them a shot taken by Marina Oswald of her

husband Lee Harvey Oswald holding a rifle in the back yard

of their Dallas home in 1963. For nearly 15 years after the

assassination only two such photos were known. Roscoe

White's became the third. In its final report, the House

Special Committee on Assassinations identified the photo as

coming from the family of a former Dallas policeman.

According to Ricky White and an investigator for the House

committee, Geneva White had contacted the FBI after the

burglary. The FBI informed the committee of the existence

of the photo. The matter was not pursued because

committee investigators didn't know about White's past

relationship with Oswald or Geneva White's brief

employment at Jack Ruby's Carousel Club. OTHERS FIND

OUT Until he discovered the footlocker, Ricky White says

he didn't think much about his father or the Kennedy

assassination. He grew up in Dallas and Paris, where he

went to school, got married and moved to Midland where he

and his wife have two children. There he took a job selling

oil field equipment. As shocking as the diary was to Ricky

White and his mother, Ricky says it was the safe deposit box

key that was to draw others into the Roscoe White story.

Thinking his father might have left money or valuables in a

deposit box, Ricky White tried to find a bank that would

recognize the key. By 1988 he was so frustrated in his

attempts that he turned to Midland District Attorney Al

Schorre for help. Schorre says he and his chief investigator,

J. D. Lucky, failed to find the bank. Schorre and Lucky say

they repeatedly asked to see Roscoe White's diary after

Ricky White mentioned it, but that he told them a relative in

the Lubbock area had it. Ricky White says he may have told

Schorre the diary was somewhere else but that he had

always kept it in his possession. Finally, Schorre, who

lacked authority to demand the diary, called the FBI. Ricky

White says three agents came to his house and asked him to

answer questions in their Midland office. He says he took his

father's effects with him and the FBI made copies of all the

items except the diary. He says after several hours of

questioning he returned home with all his father's effects.

Later that same day, White says, FBI agent Tom Farris

came to his house to retrieve a notebook he had

inadvertently left in the box of Roscoe White's effects. White

says he became aware that the diary was missing three or

four days later. "I never said that the (FBI agents) took it,"

he says. "I am just saying he was the last one to leave that

box." Agent Farris, who is in the Midland FBI office,

transferred inquiries about the diary to his supervisor, Tom

Kirspel. Kirspel would neither confirm nor deny that the

agents had seen a diary. White says he never asked the FBI

if it had the missing diary because he was "scared" of the

agents who called at his house. "I don't want to have

anything to do with the FBI," he says. Ricky White says FBI

agent Ron Butler told him in 1988 that the FBI had

determined that Roscoe White was at a crime scene in far

Northeast Dallas at the time Kennedy was shot. Butler

declined to comment on any conversations with Ricky

White. QUESTION OF AUTHENTICITY Shaw, the

director of the JFK Assassination Information Centre in

Dallas, says Ricky White has passed both a polygraph test

and a voice stress analysis and passed both tests "with flying

colours." However, the authenticity of the messages Ricky

White says he found is undetermined. Office of Naval

Intelligence spokesman John Wanat says the agency cannot

determine whether the messages came from authentic ONI

cables without the coded cables. "What they have there is

really nothing that we can narrow down as far as who may

have generated it or if it's legitimate or whether it's something

that was fabricated," Wanat said after viewing texts of the

messages. John Stockwell, former chief of the Central

Intelligence Agency's Angola Task Force in Washington,

D.C. has seen the messages and sees a "90 to 95 percent

probability" that they are genuine. However, he says he

cannot discount the possibility the messages are part of "an

elaborate hoax." "I've measured it against my own readings

and consultations with researchers of the Kennedy thing,"

says Stockwell, who ended a 12- year CIA career in 1976

after being accused of violating his secrecy agreement with

the agency. "I can't see anything in what they have found and

what the young man (Ricky White) is saying that is

implausible in terms of what our best knowledge of the

assassination is now. It all could very well be true, and I

would put it at a high probability that it is true." Bob Inman

vehemently disagrees. After reading copies of the text,

Inman, former naval intelligence director (1974-76) and CIA

deputy director (1981-82), says the messages were not

ONI- generated. None of the three-digit code names in the

heading of the messages means anything, he says. "My

reaction is that it's a forgery of some kind or invalid," Inman

says. "There is not anything about this format that I have ever

seen before. That's not the way messages were set up in

those days at all." Less is known about what Ricky White

says is a witness elimination list that he found in the canister.

Ricky White says there were 28 witnesses on the list, news

clippings of each victim and accompanied in some cases by

his father's writing. "Ricky White's story is no less logical

than what we have been led to believe in 27 years." says

Fensterwald. "If just anyone came out of the woodwork and

said, 'I shot John Kennedy,' I would be exceedingly cautious

about it. But if someone who was in the Marine Corps with

Oswald, whose wife worked for Jack Ruby and who knew

the Tippit family, crawls out of the woodwork and says I

was involved in it, that doesn't stretch my credulity at all. "It

does, however, need a lot more investigation by some

official body with power to subpoena witnesses. I don't think

private citizens can carry it much further." PREVIOUS

INQUIRIES ON ASSASSINATION The assassination of

President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas was

investigated by two government bodies: The Warren

Commission, headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren,

concluded after a nine-month investigation in 1964 that Lee

Harvey Oswald, acting alone, fired two shots from the sixth

floor of the Texas School Book Depository, killing President

John F. Kennedy and wounding Texas Gov. John Connally.

The report conclusions left many skeptics. Since bullets

passed through the victims and shattered, investigators were

not able to match the rifling on the bullets to the marks that

would have been caused by Oswald's rifle. After a

three-year investigation, the House Select Committee on

Assassinations concluded in early 1979 that Oswald fired

two shots that killed Kennedy and wounded Connally.

Scientific acoustical evidence indicated a "high probability"

that an unidentified second gunman was firing from the

grassy knoll to the front and right of the presidential

limousine, but missed. TEXT OF NAVY CABLES

------------------------------------------------------------------

Navy Int. Code A MRC Remark data 1666106 NRC VDC

NAC Dec. 63 Remarks Mandarin: Code G: Stay within

department, witnesses have eyes, ears and mouths. You

(illegible) do of the mix up. The men will be in to cover up all

misleading evidence soon. Stay as planned wait for further

orders. C. Bowers RE - rifle Code AAA destroy/on/

------------------------------------------------------------------

Navy Int. Code A MRC Remark data 1666106 NRC VDC

NAC (illegible). 63 Remarks Mandarin: Code A Foreign

affairs assignments have been cancelled. The next assignment

is to eliminate a National Security threat to world wide

peace. Destination will be Houston, Austin or Dallas.

Contacts are being arranged now. Orders are subject to

change at any time. Reply back if not understood. C.

Bowers OSHA RE - rifle Code AAA destroy/on/

------------------------------------------------------------------

Navy Int. Code A MRC Remark data 1666106 Sept. 63

Remarks Mandarin: Code A Dallas destination chosen.

Your place hidden within the department. Contacts are

within this letter. Continue on as planned. C. Bowers OSHA

RE - rifle Code AAA destroy/on/

------------------------------------------------------------------

(Part 2 - The post-press conference follow-up story) August

7, 1990 DALLAS COP'S SON ROLLS OUT JFK

THEORY MATTOX, CIA, HOLLYWOOD ANSWER

CONSPIRACY CLAIM By Andrew Likakis The Texas

attorney general, a major Hollywood producer and the

Central Intelligence Agency are now being written into the

newest chapter in the never-ending mystery of who

assassinated President John F. Kennedy. A 29-year-old

unemployed oil equipment salesman from Midland stood

before scores of reporters in Dallas Monday and implicated

his dead father in the assassination. Soon after, Attorney

General Jim Mattox said he'd gladly review the evidence,

and the CIA issued an unheard of denial. At the same time,

the FBI, which had previously refused to comment on Ricky

White's story, issued a statement in Washington saying

agents had reviewed and dismissed White's story two years

ago. And, finally, those who believe White's story is true

acknowledge that last weekend, several of them met in

Hollywood with producer/director Oliver Stone, presumably

to discuss movie rights to the White story. The latest chapter

in the Kennedy epic began at a two-hour press conference

in which White said his father, Roscoe Anthony White,

joined the Dallas Police Department in October 1963 with

the express intent of killing Kennedy. During the press

conference called by two assassination research groups and

several Midland businessmen, White and Baptist minister

Jack Shaw talked about incriminating entries in Roscoe

White's missing diary, decoded cables, and the relationship

that Roscoe White and his wife, Geneva, had with Lee

Harvey Oswald, Dallas Officer J. D. Tippit and Jack Ruby.

Based on his own memories, his father's diary and effects,

and the recollections of his mother, Ricky White told

reporters that his father had been one of three shooters on

the day Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. Although

Officer Tippit was a friend of his father's, Ricky White says

his father shot Tippit to death in the Oak Cliff section of

Dallas about 45 minutes after the assassination, as he and

Oswald were trying to get away. Oswald was later accused

of killing Tippit. During the press conference, White said his

father was following orders to kill Kennedy and that, while

he did not know who issued the orders, three messages

found among his father's effects have coding that might have

come from the Office of Naval Intelligence or, indirectly, the

CIA. CIA RESPONSE: 'LUDICROUS' The suggestion of

CIA involvement brought a sharp response Monday from

agency spokesman Mark Mansfield in Washington: "These

allegations - that this was done on CIA orders, that this guy

worked for us and that CIA had any role in the assassination

of President Kennedy - are ludicrous." Roscoe White never

worked for the CIA, Mansfield said, adding: "normally, we

never confirm nor deny employment, but these allegations

are so outrageous that we felt it necessary and appropriate

to respond." Also Monday, the FBI issued a statement

saying its agents had considered the Ricky White story in

1988 and had "determined that this information is not

credible." Bernard Fensterwald, executive director of the

Assassination Archives and Research Centre in Washington,

said Monday that Mattox will be given all material that points

toward Roscoe White's involvement in the assassination.

RUBY, OSWALD MEETING In another curious twist to

the case, Mattox said late Monday he is interested in pursing

the White story because he was once told by his mother, a

waitress at Campisi's Egyptian Restaurant in Dallas, that

Ruby frequented the restaurant and that she thought she saw

Ruby and Oswald eating dinner there together once. The

restaurant owner, the late Joe Campisi, testified before the

House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978 that he

didn't see Oswald in his eatery, Mattox said. Mattox said he

believes he has jurisdiction in the case, and he would

interview White and his associates "to see what they've got

and let them explain it to me." "The key to the thing, of

course, is, if the FBI acknowledges seeing the diary,"

Mattox said. "The only thing to do is to get a look at the

diary or acknowledgement (by the FBI) that it existed." "This

is not a solution to the John Kennedy case," Fensterwald

said after Ricky White told his story. "It's information we

think is important, and we think it's true. Even if what is said

here today checks out, the case is not solved. We still don't

know who planned it and paid for it and basically what the

shooting was about. The best we can hope for is to get out

of this an idea of who the actual assassins were." It may be

difficult for Mattox or anybody else to do much with the

case without the Roscoe White diary, which disappeared in

1988. The leather bound journal talked about the

assassination and the aftermath, said Ricky White, adding

that he and his mother read it. Roscoe White died of injuries

sustained in an explosive fire in 1971. His widow, Geneva, is

critically ill and, according to family members, unable to be

interviewed. A 'SILENCED' WIFE According to the Rev.

Shaw, Geneva White could help an investigation. Shaw says

Roscoe and Geneva White confided in him in 1970-71 when

they were having marital problems. And, he says, Geneva

White confided in him again during the last year, telling him

that she was working as a hostess in Ruby's Carousel Club

when she overheard her husband and Ruby discussing "the

entire plot of the assassination of the President two months

before the shooting. After the assassination, Shaw says,

Geneva White was given electric shock treatments and kept

sedated so she "would be silenced." Ruby had told her "in no

uncertain terms that if she opened her mouth she was dead

and her children were dead," Shaw says Geneva White told

him. Shaw says Geneva White told him she confronted her

husband after an organized crime figure approached her in

New Orleans in 1971 and told her to deliver a warning to

her husband. According to Shaw, Geneva White was shown

nearly a dozen photographs and identified the man in New

Orleans as Charles Nicoletti, formerly the number one

hitman with the Sam Giancana Mafia family in Chicago.

Nicoletti was executed gangland style in 1977, about a year

after Giancana also met the same fate. Shaw says that, when

she returned to Dallas and told her husband of the ominous

meeting in New Orleans, "he told her everything." Shaw says

that, as he lay in a hospital dying from burns in 1971 Roscoe

White told him that he had been marked for execution by

some of his underworld associates and that he believed the

fire had been deliberately started to kill him. A

HOLLYWOOD INTEREST Ricky White said Monday

that, since he found his father's diary, he has been consumed

full-time with trying to find out what role his father played in

the assassination. He said that for more than a year he has

received a "monthly salary" from the Matsu Corp., which

was formed by seven Midland oilmen solely to help finance

Ricky's investigation into his father's involvement in the

assassination. Matsu president Gary Baily said Ricky began

receiving financial help from Matsu on a "day-to-day basis"

about six weeks ago after getting just expense funds for

more than a year. Baily also said Ricky White is negotiating

with Hollywood producer/director Oliver Stone for movie

rights to his story. Last weekend, Ricky White, his wife and

Larry Howard of the JFK Assassination Information Centre

in Dallas met in the Los Angeles area with Oliver Stone and

toured Universal Studios. "Oliver Stone is interested, but no

deal has been made," Baily said. Matsu so far has spent

more than $100,000 on the White project, Baily said. If any

money is generated by the White story, about 74 percent

will go to Ricky White's family. The rest would go to the

Matsu Corp., Baily said.