I received this email from Tosh Plumlee:
..."Victor Marchette has confirmed Nags Head operations and the base at Nags Head and Oswald being there in an Intell ONI operation....("DEAD WRONG" by Richard Belzer and David Wayne, August 21, 2012" ) Also there were many other matters he did confirm that are not in the book Dead Wrong. I thought after all these years and the trials and tribulations we encountered on trying to nail this down that you would be interested in this section of the book... anyway, I am not getting involved in this again... just thought I would let you know... it is starting to look like what I have said all these years "Lee was MI intel via ONI, Dallas... "
Tosh long ago told me that he too trained at Nags head [in unconventional warfare and related]. There, Tosh claims to have met between classes one Lee Oswald [who was not in any of his classes, but on the 'campus' at the same time - and they had some minor interactions. Later, in Dallas, Tosh claims to have again met LHO before the assassination and they recalled meeting in Nags Head.
In Dallas Jail LHO tried desperately to call a Mr. Hurt in Raleigh, N.C....which is just a stone's throw from where Nags Head was located. Could the Mr. Hurt have been one of his instructors or a 'cleared intermediary contact' to call if in peril, to put him in contact or pass a message to his real control contact?! I think yes.
It is also known that ONI was running at the time LHO went to the USSR a false defector program. I'm quite sure LHO was one of its false defectors.
There is much more on this topic, but I'll start the thread with this. Look at the attachment.
IDW August 2008
I'm a native of North Carolina and a portion of my JFK Assassination Chronology was published in Jim Fetzer's book, MURDER IN DEALEY PLAZA.
I'd like to comment on Jim DeEugenio's statement on a recent show that Oswald made a call to Nags Head, North Carolina.
In fact, Oswald placed the call to RALEIGH, North Carolina. What has become known as "the Raleigh call" was explored in depth in a now defunct Raleigh magazine called THE SPECTATOR. The story was well researched by Grover Proctor. Bernie Reeves was the editor of THE SPECTATOR and is now the publisher of METRO MAGAZINE in Raleigh, NC. (I recommend both men to you as interesting interviews for your show, Len.)
Nags Head is about a three hour drive from Raleigh. (I think Jim mentioned that Nags Head was close to Raleigh. I suppose "close" is a matter of interpretation.
I list this entry in my chronology:
10:45 PM (Nov. 22, 1963) Oswald, who has been placed in a cell on the fifth floor of the Dallas City Hall, places a long distance call to Raleigh, North Carolina. According to one of the switchboard operators, Mrs. Troon, she and a coworker (Mrs. Swinney) have been alerted that law enforcement officers -- she believes they might be Secret Service men -- will be arriving to listen in on an Oswald telephone call. Two men eventually arrive, show identification and are shown into a room next to the switchboard. When Oswald places the call, at about 10:45 PM this evening, Mrs. Swinney manages the call with Mrs. Troon listening in. Oswald is informed by Mrs. Swinney, as she has been instructed, that the number doesn't answer. The call is then disconnected without ever really having been placed. Later, Mrs. Swinney tears the page off her notation pad and tosses it into the trash can. Mrs. Troon later recovers the note and retains it as a souvenir. (That slip of paper will turn up seven years from now in a Freedom of Information suit brought by Chicago researcher Sherman H. Skolnick (a civil action filed in Federal District Court in Chicago, April 6, 1970, No. 70C 790). It shows a collect call attempted from the jail by Lee Harvey Oswald to a John Hurt at 919-834-7430 and it gives an additional telephone number in the 919 Area Code, 833-1253.) The call is made to Raleigh, North Carolina to a man named John Hurt. The note lists two alternative numbers, which do appertain to published subscribers of that name. One of the two John Hurts served in U.S. Military Intelligence during World War II.
Professor Blakey, Chief Counsel of Congress' Assassinations Committee, will eventually conclude: "It was an outgoing call, and therefore I consider it very troublesome material. The direction in which it went was deeply disturbing."
Victor Marchetti, author of THE CIA AND THE CULT OF INTELLIGENCE, alleges that Oswald's attempted call to Raleigh is an effort to contact a "fake cutout." He explains that all intelligence agents work through "cutouts", middlemen who are called if an agent is in a scrape. Therefore, according to Marchetti, Oswald thought he was working for a spy agency, most probably the CIA.
There were two John Hurts listed in the 1962 Southern Bell telephone directory for Raleigh, North Carolina. John W. Hurt is listed as living on Old Wake Forest Road and has not been traced by researchers. John David Hurt is listed as living on New Bern Avenue. This Mr. Hurt, who served as a U.S. Army Counterintelligence officer during World War II, was contacted by researchers but denied that he ever received or made a call to LHO in the Dallas jail. John David Hurt is now deceased.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Detailed information regarding the Raleigh telephone call was initially uncovered by Grover Proctor and Bernie Reeves and first reported in The Spectator, Raleigh, N.C.
Secret Service agent Abraham Bolden was the duty officer for the Secret Service's Chicago office on the weekend of the assassination. He states that the Secret Service office in Dallas contacted him late on the evening of the 23rd and requested a report on any phonetic spelling of "Hurt" or "Heard."
Gerry Patrick Hemming states that the CIA had access to "call forwarding" during the 50s and 60s - well before the general public knew of it. According to Hemming, "Call Forwarding," at this time, was a secret service available to various intelligence agencies. It is possible, therefore, that Oswald's Raleigh call was forwarded once it was routed through Raleigh, N.C. Hemming suggests that the call was possibly routed to either the Elizabeth City or Nags Head area of North Carolina.
The Warren Commission Report merely states that: "Between 4 and 4:30 p.m., Oswald made two telephone calls to Mrs. Ruth Paine at her home in Irving; at about 5:30 p.m. he was visited by the president of the Dallas Bar Association with whom he spoke for about 5 minutes. From 6 to 7:15 p.m. Oswald was interrogated once again in Captain Fritz' office and then returned to his cell. At 8 p.m. he called the Paine residence again and asked to speak to his wife, but Mrs. Paine told him that his wife was no longer there." The telephone call to Raleigh, NC is not mentioned by the Warren Commission. WC
SO - it IS possible that the call was routed to Nags Head ... but we do have a CIA base in Elizabeth City.
On a personal note, I know a lot of people on North Carolina's Outer Banks where Nags Head is located. There were, of course, cottages along the beach during the time Oswald could've received his training as a defector there - but the population was small enough so that the influx of even a dozen or so military personnel would've been noted. This, as I discovered, is the case. People I've talked to there remember around a dozen men who were sent to the Coast Guard station on the Outer Banks. The "word" was that they were recovering alcoholics involved in a program to rehabilitate them. Oswald could very well have been among them. So, Marchetti may be correct in asserting that Oswald quite probably received some of his training as a defector at or near Nags Head, North Carolina.
Merely wanted to pass this information along as a clarification.
Best regards,
Ira David Wood III
Grover Proctor: Excerpt of James Douglass' Unspeakable: The Raliegh Call:
http://www.groverproctor.us/jfk/jfk-douglass.html
In an interview, Marchetti said, "[Oswald] was probably calling his cut-out. He was calling somebody who could put him in touch with his case officer. He couldn't go beyond that person. There's no way he could. He just had to depend on this person to say, 'Okay, I'll deliver the message.' Now, if the cut-out has already been alerted to cut him off and ignore him, then..."
[ 850 ]
The interviewer asked Marchetti about the plight of an undercover agent in trouble who was desperately seeking help, as Oswald seemed to be doing:
Interviewer: "Okay, if someone were an agent, and they were involved in something, and nobody believes they are 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."
Interviewer: "If I were 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."
Interviewer: "A verification contact?"
Marchetti: "Yes, you would."
Interviewer: "Would I be dead?"
Marchetti: "It would all depend on the situation. If you get into bad trouble, we're not going to verify you. No how, no way."
Interviewer: "But there is a call mechanism set up."
Marchetti: "Yes."
Interviewer: "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.'"
Interviewer: "Was that his death warrant?"
Marchetti: "You betcha. Because this time he went over the dam, whether he knew it or not, or whether they set him up or not. It doesn't matter. He was over the dam. At this point it was executive action."
[ 851 ]
"Executive Action" was a CIA code phrase for assassination.
SHERMAN H. SKOLNICK, plaintiff, ) Civil Action.
vs.
NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS SERVICE, defendant
(E) According to a City of Dallas jail document, a person known as Lee Harvey Oswald
made a collect call, November 23, 1963, to John Hurt, Raleigh, North Carolina; one of two calls
he made from said jail. A copy of said document is attached hereto and made a part hereof as
Appendix E . Later investigation shows that the name was John David Hurt, whose address is
201 Hillsboro, Apt. 4, Raleigh , North Carolina. In 1963, Hurt's wife, Billie G. Hurt, was
listed at said address. John David Hurt has a background as Special Agent, U.S. Army Counter
-2-
Intelligence Corps. Plaintiff will offer additional data on John David Hurt at a trial on the merits
of this case.
On November 24, 1963, Acting Supervisor Martineau called one of his secret service agents
and asked him if he had ever heard of a John Heard, phonetically pronounced. Martineau asked
the agent to "pull" all cards marked "Heard". There were approximately 100 such "Heards".
It is believed that the illecret Service arrested a John Heard at that time; said name phonetically
pronounced.
[URL="http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg Subject Index Files/S Disk/Skolnick Sherman My Suit/Item 20.pdf"]http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg Subject Index Files/S Disk/Skolnick Sherman My Suit/Item 20.pdf
[/URL]
Treon to Proctor on Hurt:
Updated deposition, corrected in brackets:
About 10 or 15 minutes after I entered the switch board room a knock came to the door, which is kept locked at night for security purposes. Mrs. Swinney, who was closest to the door, went and unlocked it.
Two men identified themselves to her, I think by showing their identification cards. I didn't remember what they said but I assumed they were the expected law enforcement men. They entered the room and immediately when to the equipment room.
I knew that either Mrs. Swinney or myself would handle the Oswald call. A few minutes after the men went into the private room, a red light came up on the board showing a call from the jail. Mrs. Swinney and I both plugged in simultaneously to take it, but when I realized we both had the call, I [ unplugged ] and let her handle it alone. I did not unplug. I quit trying to handle the call & let her but I stayed plugged in with my key open.
My daughter had asked me that if I handled the call to make a memorandum of it -- a copy of the original ticket -- as a souvenir.
However, when Mrs. Swinney handled the call I sat back and listened. I heard her repeat a number to the caller and saw her write down details on a notation pad, which is normal routine. She then closed the key so no one on the line could hear her, then called the two men in the room on a line and said that Oswald's was personally placing his call.
Because I wanted to get the telephone number and the name of the town to make a duplicate ticket for my daughter, I listened and watched very carefully for Mrs. Swinney to place the call with the long distance operator. She appeared very nervous and visibly shaken. For a few minutes she just sat there trembling.
I understood why she was nervous but what I really expected was that she would get [ approximately 8 words illegible here ]
I continued watching and listening but she did not place the call.
At this time, because the key was closed, neither Oswald nor the men in the equipment room could know what was happening or whether she placed the call on another connection.
I was dumbfounded at what happened next. Mrs. Swinney opened the key to Oswald and told him "I am sorry the number doesn't answer." I am pretty certain she said number and not numbers. She then unplugged and disconnected Oswald.
Immediately, then, the two men in the equipment room came out, thanked us for our cooperation and left.
[ A few moments later, Mrs. Swinney tore the page off her notation pad and threw it in the waste paper basket. ] I did not say this. I do not know what Mrs. Swinney did with her L.D. ticket I think the time of the Oswald call would be about 10:45 p.m. and Mrs. Swinney left at around 11:00 p.m. or just after.
[ When she walked out of the room, I got up from my position, walked to the waste paper basket and took the piece of paper out. It was just an unofficial piece of paper from a pad with [ approximately 10 words illegible here; new sentence begun ] long distance call, an operator will scribble out details and only if the call is completed will she transfer this to an official ticket.
I immediately noted all the details made by Mrs. Swinney and made out a long distance call ticket. I threw this scrap of paper back into the waste paper basket. At the time I didn't even think about keeping it. All I wanted was a souvenir. ] I did not say all this. I was asked if I knew what Mrs. Swinney did with her ticket. I said I had no idea, that tickets on L.D. calls not completed were not normally kept but I did not know what she did with it. I heard Oswald place the call -- give his name etc. as I was [ last line of Mrs. Treon's note cropped off National Archives copy ]
No other calls were made by Oswald from the jail during the time I was on duty between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. I know of no others made by him at any time, but it is possible that some could have been made without my knowledge.
I didn't say anything about this at the time [ because ] about Mrs. Swinney [ had been ] being too nervous to place the call [ and ] as I didn't want to cause trouble at the switch board, both for her and myself. However, I have kept the ticket I made [ without ] [ original typed copy strikes through letters "with"; Mrs. Treon lined out the entire word ] that night and I have often thought about giving it to some official -- but I have never quite gotten around to it.
I only mentioned it casually to Mr. Winston Smith, a friend of mine, a few months ago. I forgot completely about it until the 15th day of January, 1968, until I got a telephone call saying Mr. Smith had mentioned the subject to Sheriff Owen, who was interested in learning more about it.
An exact copy of the ticket referred to is attached hereto and marked "Exhibit A".
I have read all the foregoing and it is true and have initialed every page.
___________________________________
MRS. ALVEETA A. TREON
STATE OF MISSOURI COUNTY OF GREENE
Before me personally appeared Mrs. Alveeta A. Treon, who by me being first duly sworn, did say that the above and foregoing Affidavit, consisting of three pages, is true.
___________________________________
NOTARY PUBLIC
http://www.jfkassassinationforum.com/ind...380.0;wap2
~~~
In reading Dick Russell, The Man Who Knew Too Much regarding Richard Case Nagell it is highly suggestive of Lee's having reached out to an earlier contact or handler. Per Mrs. Treon it was his only call beyond his wife. Raleigh-Nags Head-ONI-False Defector Program. That the fairies in dog collars shriek incoming call highlights its importance. A shoutout to Sherman Skolnick crossed over and watching from the Cloudy Knoll. Had we got the transcendent POTUS we were promised we'd have the dossier on Mssrs. Hurt and Joannides. Tosh is wise to stay on the sunny side of the street.
Thanks for posting this Peter. :thumbsup:
Good stuff, Peter. The Raleigh phone call is one of those tantalising tidibits that this case seems to have in abundance. It also proves, by itself, that Oswald was no ordinary minimum wage "loser." We know pretty much about Oswald's background, and to my knowledge he had no ties to North Carolina. So what innocent explanation would there be for him to call anyone there?
Isn't Victor Marchetti still alive? I'd love to see him active on these forums.
Thanks all for the posts. Prouty also in a face to face meeting with me verified that 'near Nags Head and often referred by that name' that there was an ONI facility for training ALL branches of MI spookdom, but it was primarily an ONI-run and controlled facility. There were sub-facilities too...but one main 'campus' where courses in classrooms taught 'tradecraft' of various types. The smaller facilities were for 'field work and stuff so secret, even the other cleared people there at the main campus had to be kept away. The blocking of the call makes it 100000% suspicious. Don's comment that there is no PUBLIC account of a N.C. connection to LHO. Plumlee and others say otherwise. The call shows there was. While everything Hemming said has to be looked at with caution, he did at times speak the truth and I'd not be surprised that in 1963 there was call-forwarding of some sort for spooks.....
I'm sure TSFM has a large and extensive exhibit on the Raleigh call - ha! The WC certainly covered it completely on zero pages. Busy now, but hope to post some other tidbits on this call...which is one of the MANY little known incidents related to Dallas that prove the official version a cover-up, at best.
The Raleigh Call
Dr. Grover B. Proctor, Jr.
Combined from two articles published in Spectator Magazine
July 17 and 24, 1980
One of the most interesting and potentially important aspects of the John Kennedy assassination may not have anything to do with the murder itself. A story concerning the actions of the accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, has simmered on the back burner of the investigation since its discovery ten years ago, and is considered by leading assassination authorities to be a key in the unsolved mystery.
Oswald's movements and statements inside the Dallas jail up to the time of his murder have always been a huge mystery, and any clues to what happened during that time are vigorously sought by all researchers. So when a story surfaced that Oswald attempted to place a call from the jail to a person whose name had not otherwise entered the assassination investigation, it was big news.
In short, it is alleged that Oswald attempted to place a call to a John Hurt in Raleigh, North Carolina on Saturday evening, November 23, 1963, but was mysteriously prevented from completing the call. Though there is speculation that the call was incoming rather than outgoing (for example, a crank call to the jail from someone by that name), private and Congressional researchers believe Oswald, for whatever reasons, was the one attempting the call. The implications of that call have prompted former U.S. Intelligence officials to speculate on Oswald's possible link with intelligence agencies.
How We Know What We Know
On the night of November 23, 1963, two telephone operators were working the switchboard that controlled, among other Dallas municipal offices, the jail. One of the ladies, Mrs. Alveeta A. Treon, made a statement concerning the events of that night to assassination researcher and attorney Bernard Fensterwald some five years after the assassination, but then refused to sign it on advice from her lawyer, according to Fensterwald. The following is a condensation of that statement:
Mrs. Treon arrived for work at the switchboard between 10:15 and 10:35 that evening, and was told by her fellow worker, Mrs. Louise Swinney, that their supervisor had asked them to assist law enforcement officials to listen to a call that Lee Harvey Oswald would be making soon. Two men, that Mrs. Treon thinks might have been Secret Service agents, subsequently came into the switchboard area and were put in an adjacent room where they could monitor the expected call.
At about 10:45, the call from the jail came through, and both ladies rushed to take it. Mrs. Swinney handled the call, as it turned out; wrote down the information on the number Oswald wished to reach; and notified the two men of the call. Quoting from Mrs. Treon's statement: "I was dumbfounded at what happened next. Mrs. Swinney opened the key to Oswald and told him, 'I'm sorry, the number doesn't answer.' She then unplugged and disconnected Oswald without ever really trying to put the call through. A few moments later, Mrs. Swinney tore the page off her notation pad and threw it into the wastepaper basket."
After Mrs. Swinney left work at approximately 11:00 p.m., Mrs. Treon retrieved the piece of paper, and copied the information from it onto a telephone slip commonly used by the operators to record calls, so that she could keep it as a "souvenir."
That slip, which would turn up seven years later in a Freedom of Information suit brought by Chicago researcher Sherman H. Skolnick (a civil action filed in Federal District Court in Chicago, April 6, 1970, No. 70C 790), contains some startling things. It purports to show a collect call attempted from the jail by Lee Harvey Oswald to a John Hurt at 919-834-7430 and it gives another telephone number in the 919 Area Code, 833-1253. (The slip is reproduced in the Appendix of the 1975 book, Coup d'Etat in America by Canfield and Weberman, the first major work to deal with the "Raleigh call" and its implications for Oswald's links to intelligence agencies.)
What do we know about those two telephone numbers? The House Assassinations Committee gave one of its staffers, Surell Brady, reponsibility for investigating the "Raleigh Call." Though the committee's final report did not mention the call, Brady wrote a 28-page internal memorandum outling the results of their investigation of the incident.
In an insert after page 15 of the document, it is incorrectly reported that the two numbers listed on the telephone slip "were unpublished in 1963." This information was reported as having been supplied by Carolyn Rabon of Southern Bell Telephone Co. in 1978. However, a simple check of the December, 1962 Southern Bell telephone directory for Raleigh, North Carolina (which would have been current at the time of the assassination) and the December, 1963 directory (which would contain any new information and reflect any changes of listing status) shows that both numbers were published.
Thus, both of these numbers would have been available to anyone calling "Information" in Raleigh, asking for a John Hurt. This is the way the listings appear in those directories:
DECEMBER, 1962
Hurt John D 415 New Bern Av TE4-7430
Hurt John W Old Wake Forest Rd 833-1253
DECEMBER, 1963
Hurt John D 201 Hillsbro 834-7430
Hurt John W Old Wake Forest Rd 833-1253
Why Southern Bell would have provided incorrect information, or how they could have made such a gross mistake, is uncertain.
Who Is John Hurt?
Obviously, the identity of any person whom Lee Harvey Oswald might have attempted to contact after having been arrested for the murder of the President would be of immense interest. Other than identifying the second telephone number as belonging to one "John W. Hurt of [Old Wake] Forest Road in Raleigh, North Carolina," the Brady report does not supply any information about that number. Subsequent attempts to trace John W. Hurt have proven fruitless.
The first number, however, presents less of a mystery. I dialed the number and spoke at some length with a man who identified himself as John David Hurt. (Excerpts from that interview accompany this article.) The most tantalizing aspect of this Mr. Hurt is that he was a U.S. Army Counterintelligence officer during World War II. Mr. Hurt acknowledged this wartime service, but denied ever having been anything other than an insurance investigator and an employee of the State of North Carolina since the war.
Hurt denied that he made or received a call to or from the Dallas jail or Lee Harvey Oswald. When asked if he knew of any reason why Lee Harvey Oswald would wish to call him, he said, "I do not. I never heard of the man before President Kennedy's death." Mr. Hurt professed to having been a "great Kennedyphile," and said he "would have been more inclined to kill" Oswald than anything else. Asked if he had any explanation as to why his name and telephone number should turn up this way, he said, "None whatever."
I also asked him if he had any knowledge of the second phone number on the slip, and he said he had never had that number in his use. "My number has been the same for, oh, I'd say forty years."
Incoming or Outgoing?
So did Oswald attempt to call out? If so, why was his call thwarted by men in authority? And why would Oswald want to call a man in Raleigh, North Carolina, who seems never to have heard of him before? And if Oswald didn't call out, how do we explain Mrs. Treon's statement, one she gave reluctantly and with no attempt to gain publicity?
To begin with, let's explore the possibility that Oswald did not make the call. Anthony Summers, in whose 1981 book Conspiracy the Raleigh call has surfaced most recently, told me privately that some researchers believe the call in question to have been incoming to the jail, not an attempt by Oswald to call out. One of the most distinguished of today's assassination researchers, Paul Hoch, explained to me an alternative theory of his concerning the events of November 23.
Hoch believes that Hurt, or someone using his name and telephone number, called the Dallas jail prior to 10:15 p.m. on that date, requesting to speak to Oswald. He theorizes that whoever took the call, possibly Mrs. Swinney, scribbled down some information, decided it was a crank call, and threw away the slip. Later, when Oswald made the call that Mrs. Treon overheard, Hoch says it was to the New York attorney John Abt, whom Oswald wanted to represent him. We know from testimony from a Secret Service inspector named Kelley that Oswald expressed interest in getting help in reaching Abt by telephone.
Hoch's theory is based on the assumption that when Mrs. Treon went exploring for the slip of paper that Mrs. Swinney discarded after the 10:45 call, she came up with the earlier, incorrect slip that related to the "crank call." When I asked Hoch how he explained the fact that there were two telephone numbers on the slip if indeed it were an incoming call, Hoch said he could not explain it. Neither, by the way, could Bernard Fensterwald when I posed the same question to him after he told me he also believes Mrs. Treon to have been mistaken. Mrs. Swinney has, to date, refused to confirm, deny, or comment on Mrs. Treon's statement.
But at least at present, Hoch's view does not seem to be shared by other researchers. Sometime after my first conversation with author Anthony Summers about the Raleigh call, he contacted me by telephone to amend his earlier, more skeptical comments.
He related an incident that followed a nationally-televised appearance the week before which featured him and House Assassinations Committee Chief Counsel G. Robert Blakey. After the program, during a longer, private conversation covering many aspects of the case, Summers confided to Blakey some doubt he had about the authenticity of the call, especially concerning whether it was an incoming call to Oswald, or outgoing from him, as alleged by Mrs. Treon.
Blakey confessed to being troubled by the call as well, but, to Summers' surprise, for the exact opposite reason. As a subsequent interview with Blakey confirmed: "The call apparently is real and it goes out; it does not come in. That's the sum and substance of it." Blakey continued, "It was an outgoing call, and therefore I consider it very troublesome material. The direction in which it went was deeply disturbing." (It should be noted that another reason for Summers' surprise at confirmation of the importance of the Raleigh call was that it came from Blakey, an open critic of Summers' conclusions that JFK's killers came from elements of American intelligence, anti-Castro Cubans, and organized crime.)
Chicago researcher Sherman Skolnick, who heads up a group called the Citizens' Committee to Clean Up the Courts, also does not agree with Hoch and Fensterwald and believes the call was outgoing. Skolnick has a theory that Hurt "was Oswald's ticket to verify that he [Oswald] was a lower-level intelligence operative."
One fact uncovered by Skolnick in sworn statements in his lawsuit that were not heard in open court is that the Secret Service took a sudden interest in someone named Hurt on November 23, 1963. In a statement from former agent Abraham Bolden, who was duty officer for the Secret Service's Chicago office that weekend, he claims that the Dallas Secret Service office called him late on the 23rd and asked for a rundown on any phonetic spelling of "Hurt" or "Heard." Obviously, something happened in Dallas that day to cause such a far-flung investigation all the way to Chicago. Whether this was because of Oswald's interest in a party named "Hurt" or because of a crank call into the Dallas jail is still unknown.
The Fingerprints of Intelligence
So what if Oswald really were attempting to make a call to John David Hurt in Raleigh, North Carolina from the Dallas jail. Where is the significance?
Anthony Summers suggests that Oswald may have been, or may have been led to believe he was, working for some aspect of American intelligence. This is not as far-fetched as it might sound, since Senator Richard Schweiker's Intelligence Committee brought to light evidence that made the senator state that Oswald had the "fingerprints of intelligence" all over him. This, plus the fact that Hurt served in Military Counterintelligence, caused Surell Brady to refer to the matter as "provocative."
Victor Marchetti, the former CIA official whose book The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence was the first book in U.S. history to be subject to pre-publication censorship, claims that the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) operated in Nag's Head, N.C., a training base for intelligence candidates to be sent to the Soviet Union. Says Marchetti, it was for "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."
Interviewed from his Northern Virginia home, Marchetti confirmed the existence of the ONI base to me privately, saying the plan was to send young men to the Soviet Union as defectors, but who in actuality were hoping to be picked up as agents by the KGB. This process is known as "doubling," as the young men would then in effect be double agents for both American and Soviet intelligence. Once placing an agent in the KGB, American intelligence could then begin funneling in disinformation. According to Marchetti, this was the plan for Oswald. Whether it worked or not, Marchetti did not say.
Marchetti seems positive in his own mind that, in making the Raleigh call, Oswald was following a set intelligence practice. That practice consists of contacting his case officer through what is known as a "cut-out," a "clean" intermediary who can act as a conduit between agent and officer without ever getting involved in the intelligence operation itself. All the "cut-out" knows is that if anyone ever calls asking for a certain officer's real name, or pseudonym, he's then to contact a predetermined person or agency. The "cut-out" can legitimately say he never heard of the agent calling, in this case thought to be Lee Harvey Oswald.
Who was Oswald's "cut-out," if the above scenario is correct? Was it either of the John Hurts listed in Raleigh in 1963? According to committee records, Mr. John David Hurt seems to have had an unusual career, but aside from his Counterintelligence work in the second World War, there is nothing to confirm or deny his candidacy as Oswald's "cut-out." Chief Counsel Blakey told me, "I think that call occurred. Now whether it occurred to [John D.] Hurt or not, I'm not sure .... I was not able to come up with anything sinister about Hurt."
If we cannot know who, says Marchetti, we can at least understand why. Whether guilty or not of the assassination, once inside the Dallas jail Oswald was looking for some way to assure his interrogators, which may well have included agents of the CIA, according to Marchetti, that he was "okay." If this were true, then one must imagine that Oswald remembered either the name John Hurt in Raleigh, or some other location which got confused with Raleigh, and that either he or someone acting for him obtained the two telephone numbers from "Information." That the call was blocked from going through gives another disturbing, and as yet unsolved, aspect to the case.
The importance of the Raleigh call ultimately is that both Marchetti, who is convinced of at least a partial involvement in the assassination by intelligence agents, and Blakey, who eschews that explanation as unnecessary, agree that it is an important, disturbing aspect of the JFK case. Said Blakey, "I consider it unanswered, and I consider the direction in which it went substantiated and disturbing, but ultimately inconclusive." When asked if he would recommend that the Justice Department look into the incident, if and when it re-opens the case, Blakey said no. His reason? "The bottom line is, it's an unanswerable mystery."
Excerpts of Interview with John David Hurt
PROCTOR:
Do you know any reason why Oswald would have tried to call you?
HURT:
I do not. I never heard of the man before President Kennedy's death. I was a great Kennedyphile, and I would have been more inclined to kill him than anything else.
PROCTOR:
Oswald, you mean.
HURT:
Yes
PROCTOR:
Did you place a call that day to the Dallas jail?
HURT:
No, I did not, and he didn't place a call to me either, I don't know how I ever got [unintelligible].
PROCTOR:
Do you have any explanation as to why your name ...
HURT:
None whatever.
PROCTOR:
Do you have the telephone number 833-1253 (the second number on the slip) in any of your business associations?
HURT:
No.
PROCTOR:
Did you in 1963?
HURT:
No, I did not.
PROCTOR:
That was the other number listed on the telephone slip beside your name.
HURT:
I don't know. My number has been the same for, oh, I'd say forty years.
PROCTOR:
In speaking with another investigator that called you about six years ago, you indicated at that time that during World War II you were in the Counterintelligence Division. Is that correct?
HURT:
That's correct.
PROCTOR:
You left that, and went into investigative work after the war.
HURT:
I was in insurance claims adjusting work, and I worked for a year for the state as a [unintelligible].
PROCTOR:
Were you ever involved as an agent in the Defense Department's Industrial Security Command?
HURT:
No, I was not.
PROCTOR:
So, once again, you have no knowledge of any call made from your number or to your number that day?
HURT:
No knowledge whatsover.
Excerpts of Interview With Victor Marchetti
PROCTOR:
If you were, as an agent, in trouble somewhere in America ....
MARCHETTI:
I was never an agent. I was an officer.
PROCTOR:
Okay, if someone were an agent, and he were 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 were an agent for the [Central Intelligence] 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. Because this time he 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:
Is the contact person's name ever the name of someone who is not necessarily an active agent but is just a contact person?
MARCHETTI:
That's right.
PROCTOR:
Then that person would go up to the next level?
MARCHETTI:
That's right, and it would be a "funny name" -- a pseudonym. Like for example, you would have a number to call. If you were my agent, and you got yourself into a peck of trouble, you might try to contact me, but maybe you can't get through.
PROCTOR:
I would contact you by telephone, right?
MARCHETTI:
Yes. But I might have covered my tracks real good so you can't contact me by telephone. In other words, I contact you, you don't contact me. But I give you a [unintelligible] number. So you call him, but I've already talked to him and said, "Don't touch him." You're screwed up.
PROCTOR:
But you would use, for that middle man, people who were not necessarily active agents or agency people, right?
MARCHETTI:
That's right. Most likely they would be cut-outs. You would have to call indirectly.
PROCTOR:
Could Oswald have had a name ....
MARCHETTI:
He was probably calling his cut-out. He was calling somebody who could put him in touch with his case officer. He couldn't go beyond that person. There's no way he could. He just had to depend on this person to say, "Okay, I'll deliver the message." Now, if the cut-out has already been alerted to cut him off and ignore him, then [unintelligible].
JFK and the Unspeakable by James W. Douglass (excerpt)
Dr. Grover B. Proctor, Jr.
SOURCE DOCUMENT COLLECTION EDITOR
Editor's Note: While James Douglass' 2008 book JFK and the Unspeakable deals with the specifics of the assassination only in about the last third of the volume, he does it with an eye for detail and a scholar's bent for exactitude. Given below is the page-and-a-half he dedicates to the Raleigh Call, in which his take appears to be one of acceptance. He even uses a footnote to argue against the theory of the call being "incoming." The section also quotes from the Spectator interview with former CIA official Victor Marchetti. The interviewer? Well, that would be me. -- G.Proctor
excerpt from
JFK and the Unspeakable by James W. Douglass
copyright 2008
Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books
pp. 365-367
As his situation grew more desperate, on late Saturday night Oswald tried to make a mysterious long-distance phone call to Raleigh, North Carolina.
That night in the Dallas City Hall, Mrs. Alveeta A. Treon and Mrs. Louise Sweeney were working as switchboard operators when two law enforcement officials came into the room. The men said they wanted to listen to a call Oswald was about to make. They were shown to an adjoining room where they could monitor the prisoner's conversation. [ 841 ]
At 10:45 p.m. Mrs. Sweeney took a call from the jail. Notifying the men in the next room that it was Oswald, she wrote down the information he gave her on the number he wanted to reach. What transpired then, apparently in obedience to the men's orders, has been described by Sweeney's co-worker, Alveeta Treon:
"I was dumbfounded at what happened next. Mrs. Sweeney opened the key to Oswald and told him, 'I'm sorry, the number doesn't answer.' She then unplugged and disconnected Oswald without ever really trying to put the call through. A few moments later, Mrs. Sweeney tore the page off her notation pad and threw it into the wastepaper basket." [ 842 ]
After Mrs. Sweeney left work at 11:00 p.m., Mrs. Treon retrieved the slip of paper. She copied the information onto a message slip as her souvenir of the event. In 1970, a copy of the slip came into the possession of Chicago researcher Sherman H. Skolnick during a Freedom of Information Act suit. [ 843 ]
According to the phone message, Oswald was trying to call a "John Hurt" in Raleigh, North Carolina, at "834-7430 or 833-1253." In November 1963, John David Hurt was listed as having the first number in Raleigh, and John William Hurt as having the second. Of the two Hurts, the first, John David Hurt, had a military intelligence background. During World War II, John David Hurt served as a U.S. Army Counterintelligence Special Agent. [ 844 ] House Select Committee on Assassinations lawyer Surrell Brady, who was in charge of investigating the Raleigh call, described the fact that John David Hurt had served in U.S. Army Counterintelligence as "provocative." [ 845 ] In a brief 1980 interview, John David Hurt denied knowing why Oswald was trying to phone him on the night of November 23, 1963. [ 846 ]
Although Oswald's purpose in making the Raleigh call has never been disclosed, former CIA officer Victor Marchetti thought he knew why. After fourteen years with the CIA, during which he became executive assistant to the Deputy Director, Victor Marchetti resigned in disillusionment in 1969. [ 847 ] He then co-authored The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, a Book-of-the-Month Club Alternate that the CIA censored, leaving 339 black spaces in the text. [ 848 ]
Marchetti said he thought Oswald was following the standard intelligence practice of trying to contact his case officer through a "cut-out," a "clean" intermediary with no direct involvement in an operation. As to why Oswald's call was made to North Carolina, Marchetti pointed out that the Office of Naval Intelligence had an operations center in Nags Head, North Carolina, for agents who had been sent as fake expatriates to the Soviet Union -- corresponding to Oswald's background. [ 849 ]
In an interview, Marchetti said, "[Oswald] was probably calling his cut-out. He was calling somebody who could put him in touch with his case officer. He couldn't go beyond that person. There's no way he could. He just had to depend on this person to say, 'Okay, I'll deliver the message.' Now, if the cut-out has already been alerted to cut him off and ignore him, then..." [ 850 ]
The interviewer asked Marchetti about the plight of an undercover agent in trouble who was desperately seeking help, as Oswald seemed to be doing:
Interviewer: "Okay, if someone were an agent, and they were involved in something, and nobody believes they are 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."
Interviewer: "If I were 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."
Interviewer: "A verification contact?"
Marchetti: "Yes, you would."
Interviewer: "Would I be dead?"
Marchetti: "It would all depend on the situation. If you get into bad trouble, we're not going to verify you. No how, no way."
Interviewer: "But there is a call mechanism set up."
Marchetti: "Yes."
Interviewer: "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.'"
Interviewer: "Was that his death warrant?"
Marchetti: "You betcha. Because this time he went over the dam, whether he knew it or not, or whether they set him up or not. It doesn't matter. He was over the dam. At this point it was executive action." [ 851 ]
"Executive Action" was a CIA code phrase for assassination.
Footnotes: 841 Grover B. Proctor, Jr., "The Phone Call That Never Was," Raleigh Spectator (July 17, 1980), p. 6. Pat Stith, "Oswald May Have Tried to Call Raleigh Man from Dallas Jail," Raleigh news and Observer (July 17, 1980), p. 11.
842 Alveeta A. Treon cited by Proctor, "Phone Call That Never Was," p. 6.
843 Proctor, "The Phone Call That Never Was," p. 6. Sherman H. Skolnick vs. National Archives and Records Service, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois Eastern Division, No. 701, April 6, 1970. I am grateful to Sherman Skolnick for sharing with me the complaint he filed and his documents.
Dallas City Hall switchboard operator Alveeta Treon moved to Springfield, Missouri, where she told her story about Oswald's attempted Raleigh call to Arnold Mickey Owen, the sheriff of Greene County, Missouri, in 1966. In a 1980 interview, Sheriff Owen said: "She gave me the impression she was scared to death. Absolutely afraid, period. In my opinion, she thought she was telling the truth." Stith, "Oswald May Have Tried," p. 11.
"The sheriff said Mrs. Treon told him that she and her daughter and another telephone operator were in the Dallas City Hall switchboard room on the evening of Nov. 23 when two lawmen came in [and said they wanted to listen to Oswald's call]." Ibid.
Raleigh News and Observer reporter Pat Stith wrote: "Mrs. Treon's daughter, who was working in November 1963 as a stenographer in the Dallas Police Department, corroborated her mother's story. The daughter asked not to be identified."
844 Proctor, "Phone Call That Never Was," p. 6.
845 Grover B. Proctor, Jr., "Oswald's Raleigh Call," Raleigh Spectator (July 24, 1980), p. 5.
846 Proctor, "Phone Call That Never Was," P. 6. After John David Hurt died in 1981, his widow told author Henry Hurt the following year that her husband "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." Henry Hurt interview with Mrs. John Hurt, March 1982. Cited in Hurt, Reasonable Doubt, pp. 244-45.
Besides conflicting with the description of the incident given by Alveeta Treon and her daughter, Mrs. Hurt's explanation leaves unresolved why there would have been phone numbers for both of the Raleigh John Hurtson the message slip, as if Oswald was trying to reach one of them but was uncertain of the correct number. If John David Hurt had initiated the call in the manner Mrs. Hurt claimed, why would he have left the phone numbers of both himself and John William Hurt? On the face of it, her story is implausible. Was Mrs. Hurt coerced into telling that story by government forces in a way similar to the pressured described by Joyce Pitzer, Lt. Cdr. William Bruce Pitzer's widow, after his death?
847 Summers, Conspiracy, p. 143.
848 Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (New York: Dell, 1973).
849 Proctor, "Oswald's Raleigh Call," p. 9.
850 850Interview with Victor Marchetti, "Marchetti: Call to Contact," Raleigh Spectator (July 24, 1980), p. 8.
851 Ibid.
Has anybody followed up on this?:
[URL="http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2013/02/new-river-nc-usmc-air-facility.html"]JFKcountercoup: New River, NC USMCAir Facility
[/URL]
P.D. Scott wrote: …An even more informative source might beOliver "Buck" Revell, the former Marine officer who after sharing informationwith the FBI about Oswald rose to be the number three man in the Bureau. Revellhas set out his lengthy involvement with the JFK case in his own words:
I have been involved in the Kennedy assassination investigation since itsinception. First as a Marine officer, I was assigned to assist the FBI while itwas conducting a detailed inquiry into Lee Harvey Oswald's military backgroundat the Marine Corps Air Facility, New River, N.C. Manyyears later, as FBI assistant director in charge of criminal investigations, itwas my responsibility to follow up and take appropriate action on the findingsand recommendations of the House Select Committee on Assassinations…Since May1991, I have been the special agent in charge of the FBI's Dallas division, nadit has been my responsibility to conduct any additional investigation warrantedin the Kennedy case, as alleged evidence or new documents have been brought tolight. 101
The Review Board should question Mr. Revell about whateverrecords he and the FBI may have consulted at the MCAF NewRiver facility, a place whee (as far as we have been told) Oswald never served.102.
[102 Note: Larry Haapanen has pointed out to me that, onDecember 11, 1963, the Secret Service reported that Captain Donovan hadsuggested the Secret Service tal to Sergeant Carnellias [sic] Brown, "presentlystationed at New River, North Carolina," who "should be able to furnish someinformation on Oswald's background" [CD 87, p. 5]. This is presumably the StaffSergeant "Cornelius Brown" whose name Donovan offered as a source to the WarrenCommission (8 WH 297-99, 302).
It is certain that none of the Oswald Marine records we nowhave were stored there.
Bill Kelly Wrote:Has anybody followed up on this?:
[URL="http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2013/02/new-river-nc-usmc-air-facility.html"]JFKcountercoup: New River, NC USMCAir Facility
[/URL]
P.D. Scott wrote: …An even more informative source might beOliver "Buck" Revell, the former Marine officer who after sharing informationwith the FBI about Oswald rose to be the number three man in the Bureau. Revellhas set out his lengthy involvement with the JFK case in his own words:
I have been involved in the Kennedy assassination investigation since itsinception. First as a Marine officer, I was assigned to assist the FBI while itwas conducting a detailed inquiry into Lee Harvey Oswald's military backgroundat the Marine Corps Air Facility, New River, N.C. Manyyears later, as FBI assistant director in charge of criminal investigations, itwas my responsibility to follow up and take appropriate action on the findingsand recommendations of the House Select Committee on Assassinations…Since May1991, I have been the special agent in charge of the FBI's Dallas division, nadit has been my responsibility to conduct any additional investigation warrantedin the Kennedy case, as alleged evidence or new documents have been brought tolight. 101
The Review Board should question Mr. Revell about whateverrecords he and the FBI may have consulted at the MCAF NewRiver facility, a place whee (as far as we have been told) Oswald never served.102.
[102 Note: Larry Haapanen has pointed out to me that, onDecember 11, 1963, the Secret Service reported that Captain Donovan hadsuggested the Secret Service tal to Sergeant Carnellias [sic] Brown, "presentlystationed at New River, North Carolina," who "should be able to furnish someinformation on Oswald's background" [CD 87, p. 5]. This is presumably the StaffSergeant "Cornelius Brown" whose name Donovan offered as a source to the WarrenCommission (8 WH 297-99, 302).
It is certain that none of the Oswald Marine records we nowhave were stored there.
Hey Bill, How far away from Nags Head is the New River facility....or were they interconnected in space or command structure?