JFK & the Unspeakable: Why He Died & Why It Matters (58 page)

[
64
]. Ibid., p. 21. Egerter’s HSCA interviewer, Michael Goldsmith, also asked her about the suggestive letters “AG” (meaning “AGENT”?) printed in an identification box on the December 9, 1960, form by which Egerter had opened Oswald’s 201 file:

Goldsmith: “What does the term ‘AG’ stand for?”

Egerter: “I have forgotten.”

Goldsmith: “Is that your handwriting?”

Egerter: “I don’t think so. I forget.”

Goldsmith: “Would that have stood for agent?”

Egerter: “No. I forget what ‘AG’ meant.” Ibid., pp. 58-59.

Lacking an independent authority to interpret the CIA form, Goldsmith accepted Egerter’s inability to remember what “AG” meant or if she had written those letters on the form, and moved on to other questions.

[
65
]. James B. Wilcott’s Testimony before the House Select Committee on Assassinations, March 22, 1978, p. 48. JFK Record Number 180-10116-10096.

[
66
]. Warren Hinckle, “Couple Talks about Oswald and the CIA,”
San Francisco Chronicle
(September 12, 1978).

[
67
]. Bob Loomis, “Ex-CIA Couple Tell of Disillusion,”
Oakland Tribune
(September 18, 1978), p. B14. Also Hinckle, “Couple Talks about Oswald.”

[
68
]. Loomis, “Ex-CIA Couple.”

[
69
]. Wilcott HSCA Testimony, p. 11. The House Select Committee evaluated Jim Wilcott’s testimony by interviewing “several present and former CIA employees selected on the basis of the position each had held during the years 1954-64,” including “a broad spectrum of areas” at the Tokyo Station. Perhaps not surprisingly, given the consequences of saying otherwise, the CIA employees all denied having any knowledge of Oswald’s having been a CIA agent. Accordingly, “the committee concluded that Wilcott’s allegation was not worthy of belief” (
HSCA
Report
, March 29, 1979, pp. 199-200). Jim Wilcott’s HSCA testimony was then sealed and became inaccessible to the public. It was finally released in 1998 under the JFK Records Act, passed by Congress as a result of the public pressure generated by Oliver Stone’s film
JFK
.

[
70
]. Wilcott HSCA Testimony, p. 47.

[
71
]. Hinckle, “Couple Talks about Oswald.”

[
72
]. Jim Wilcott, “The Assassination of John F. Kennedy: A C.I.A. Insider’s View,”
Stray Magazine
(February 1989), p. 38.

[
73
]. Wilcott HSCA Testimony, p. 35.

[
74
]. Ibid., pp. 35-37.

[
75
]. Author’s interview of Jim and Elsie Wilcott’s friend and neighbor, Bill Callison, August 31, 1997.

[
76
]. Gracia Fay Ellwood, “A Concord Vigil,”
Reformed Journal
(February 2, 1989).

[
77
]. Callison interview.

[
78
]. “Current Intelligence Memorandum,” Central Intelligence Agency, Washington, June 3, 1963.
FRUS, 1961-1963, Volume III: Vietnam, January-August 1963
(Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1991), p. 345.

[
79
]. Ibid.

[
80
]. Ellen Hammer on the Catholic newspaper
Hoa Binh
’s reconstruction of the May 8, 1963, events,
A Death in
November: America in Vietnam, 1963
, p. 116.

[
81
]. Richard Reeves,
President Kennedy: Profile of Power
(New York: Touchstone, 1993), p. 517.

[
82
].
FRUS
,
1961-1963,
vol. III, pp. 381-83.

[
83
]. Ibid., pp. 386-87, footnote 5.

[
84
]. Schlesinger,
Thousand Days
, p. 904.

[
85
].
Public Papers of the Presidents: John F. Kennedy, 1963
(Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1964), p. 469.

[
86
]. Reeves,
President Kennedy: Profile of Power,
pp. 522-23.

[
87
]. John Kenneth Galbraith, “A Communication,” originally published in the
Washington Post
(November 25, 1963); in
Ambassador’s Journal: A Personal Account of the Kennedy Years
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969), pp. 631-32.

[
88
]. Ibid., p. 629.

[
89
]. Reeves,
President Kennedy: Profile of Power,
p. 526.

[
90
]. Richard D. Mahoney,
JFK: Ordeal in Africa
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), p. 108.

[
91
]. Ibid., pp. 114, 246-48.

[
92
]. Herbert S. Parmet interview of Edmund Gullion, August 18, 1980, cited in Herbert S. Parmet,
JFK: The
Presidency of John F. Kennedy
(New York: Dial Press, 1983), p. 320.

[
93
]. Mahoney,
JFK: Ordeal in Africa,
p. 246.

[
94
]. Ibid., p. 81.

[
95
]. Ibid., p. 246.

[
96
]. Kennedy’s biographer, Richard Reeves, confirmed the president’s first choice of Gullion by interviews with both Edmund Gullion and the man who blocked his appointment, Dean Rusk. Reeves,
President Kennedy: Profile of Power,
p. 736, endnote for p. 526.

[
97
]. Anne E. Blair,
Lodge in Vietnam: A Patriot Abroad
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), pp. 12-13.

[
98
]. Ibid., p. 5.

[
99
]. Reeves,
President Kennedy: Profile of Power,
p. 429.

[
100
]. Blair,
Lodge in Vietnam,
p. 10.

[
101
]. Ibid., pp. 4, 162 note 7.

[
102
].
Robert Kennedy in His Own Words
, p. 301.

[
103
]. O’Donnell and Powers,
“Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye,”
p. 16.

[
104
]. Cited in Martin,
Wilderness of Mirrors
, p. 124.

[
105
]. Dick Russell,
The Man Who Knew Too Much
(New York: Carroll & Graf, 1992), p. 45.

[
106
]. Ibid., p. 101.

[
107
]. Ibid., p. 104.

[
108
]. Ibid., pp. 170-72. At a meeting with Nagell, Dick Russell told him he had concluded from his own research and Nagell’s oblique comments that the “HID” part of Oswald’s alias was derived from a Korean intelligence unit Nagell had worked with for the Army, and the “ELL” part had come from the last three letters of Nagell’s own name. Nagell “stared back at me, did not deny it, and quickly changed the subject.” Ibid., p. 172.

[
109
]. Nagell emphasized the word “large” when he spoke of the assassination plot to New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison.
On the Trail of the Assassins
(New York: Warner Books, 1988), p. 214.

[
110
]. Russell,
Man Who Knew Too Much
, p. 294.

[
111
]. Ibid., pp. 294, 331.

[
112
]. Ibid., p. 429.

[
113
]. Ibid., p. 437.

[
114
]. Letter from Richard Case Nagell to Dick Russell, cited in
Man Who Knew Too Much
, p. 442. Nagell said he signed his letter to Hoover with the alias “Joseph Kramer” because it was “an alias of a known Communist (Soviet) agent then residing in Canada” and an alias Nagell had himself used in a meeting with FBI agents. From Nagell’s November 21, 1975, affidavit sent to U.S. Representative Don Edwards, Chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights, cited in
Man Who Knew Too Much
, pp. 56-57.

[
115
]. Richard Case Nagell, letter to
The
New Yorker
(November 14, 1968); cited in
Man Who Knew Too Much
, p. 442.