17-09-2009, 02:53 AM
"Larry Florer was taken into police custody also as a result of being a stranger in the Dal-Tex Building. In his statement, he claimed not to have been in Dealey Plaza at the time of the shooting, but made his way there after hearing a radio broadcast in a café [12]. Braden, in his statement, made no mention of his location at the time of the shooting [13], which is odd inasmuch as he was taken in for questioning, presumably, with reference to what he had observed of the shooting of the president:
"I am here on business (oil business) and was walking down Elm Street trying to get a cab and there wasn't any. I heard people talking saying, "My God the President has been shot."
From this point, Braden's statement is strangely similar to Florer's.
Braden: "I moved on up to the building across the street from the building that was surrounded and I asked one of the girls if there was a telephone that I could use and she said, "Yes, there is one on the third floor of the building where I work."
Florer: "I stopped on east side of Houston Street across the street from the Texas School Book Depository. I stood there for a few minutes and then a lady that was standing next to me, I asked her where there was a telephone, and she said that the only pay phone that she knew of was the County Records building. She said that there were a lot of phones on the third floor of this building that I was standing in front of. She said that she worked on the third floor and that there was probably a phone up there that I could use."
Braden: "I walked through a passage to the elevator they were all getting on (freight elevator) and I got off on the third floor with all the other people and there was a lady using the pay telephone and I ask [sic] her if I could use it when she hung up and she said it was out of order and I tried to use it but with no success."
Florer: "So I rode up the elevator with this lady and got off on the third floor with this lady and we walked to the information desk and this lady went on back to her department, to her spot. So then I, there was a lady at the information desk and I asked her if I could borrow her phone and she said that all the lines were busy or something to that effect."
Braden: "I ask [sic] her how I can get out of the building and she said that there is an exit right there and then she said wait a minute here is an elevator now. I got on the elevator and returned to the ground floor and the colored man who ran the elevator said you are a stranger in this building and I am not supposed to let you up and he ran outside to an officer and said to the officer that he had just taken me up and down in the elevator and the officer said for me to identify myself and I presented him with a credit card and he said we'll have to check out everything and took me to his superior and said for me to wait and we will check it out."
Florer: "So I stood there for a minute and a fellow walked up to me. He asked me what I wanted and he told me that I couldn't use the phone. So I walked back down to the elevator and rode it back down to the lobby. As soon as I got to the lobby I walked back outside and the fellow I had talked to about using the phone was pointing out the window, pointing toward me and said that I was the man that was on the third floor. At this time two officers walked up and said for me to come with them."
All indications are, then, that Braden and Florer were considered to be suspicious merely as a result of their presence in the Dal-Tex Building. It stretches credibility that the similarities in their police statements resulted from chance; their encounters with a lady in front of the Dal-Tex Building suggest that Braden and Florer were standing together, or in close juxtaposition, when one or both of them approached her. Alternatively, this was a shared cover story to explain their presence in that building. Several researchers have discussed the possibility that shots were fired from there [e.g. 14-16].
In his book Triangle of Fire, Bob Goodman stated that the west side of the Dal-Tex building, i.e. facing Dealey Plaza, housed the offices of the Dallas Uranium and Oil company on the third floor [17]. Although believed to be owned by H.L. Hunt, Dallas Uranium and Oil was not a registered company and appears to have been a "front" [17].
In a photograph of the crowd in Dealey Plaza minutes after the shooting, snapped by Dallas Times Herald photographer William Allen, an individual is visible in a trench coat, wide-brimmed hat and dark glasses. Dallas Chief Criminal Deputy Alan Sweatt, who assisted in processing Dealey-Plaza witnesses, identified him as Jim Braden [18]. Indeed, comparison with an earlier mug-shot of Eugene Hale Brading reveals a likeness.
Several books on the assassination include photographs of a man in black-rimmed eyeglasses, purported to be Mr. Florer. The original identification of this individual as Florer appears to have been made in the pages of the Dallas Times Herald [19], yet other discussion of that newspaper story indicates that the man in "horn-rimmed glasses" at whom bystanders shouted, "I hope you die," was not identified by name [20]. In 1992, Goodman contacted an individual suspected of being the man in horn-rimmed glasses, presumably Larry Florer, only to be informed that the man was under legal counsel and instructed not to talk [21]. (Attempts to contact Mr. Goodman via his publisher were fruitless.)
In his police statement, Florer gave his age as 23, and although, in another photograph by William Allen (see below), his unlined complexion is consistent with that, the overall impression is of a man in his 30s. The putative Florer looked like Theodore (Ted) Shackley with his hair dyed. At the time of the assassination, Shackley (AKA the Blond Ghost because of his pallor) was about 35 years old and Station Chief of JM/WAVE in Miami, the headquarters of the CIA's huge Operation Mongoose, the single objective of which was to overthrow the regime of Fidel Castro in Cuba, by assassination if necessary. The vain efforts to kill Castro included collaboration with Mafia bosses.
In 1966, Shackley moved to Vientiane, Laos, to lead the CIA-backed Hmong tribes-people in their secret war with the North Vietnamese army [22]. This effort also was unsuccessful, with terrible loss of life among the Hmong. Mr. Shackley moved on to become CIA Station Chief in Saigon in late 1968. "
"I am here on business (oil business) and was walking down Elm Street trying to get a cab and there wasn't any. I heard people talking saying, "My God the President has been shot."
From this point, Braden's statement is strangely similar to Florer's.
Braden: "I moved on up to the building across the street from the building that was surrounded and I asked one of the girls if there was a telephone that I could use and she said, "Yes, there is one on the third floor of the building where I work."
Florer: "I stopped on east side of Houston Street across the street from the Texas School Book Depository. I stood there for a few minutes and then a lady that was standing next to me, I asked her where there was a telephone, and she said that the only pay phone that she knew of was the County Records building. She said that there were a lot of phones on the third floor of this building that I was standing in front of. She said that she worked on the third floor and that there was probably a phone up there that I could use."
Braden: "I walked through a passage to the elevator they were all getting on (freight elevator) and I got off on the third floor with all the other people and there was a lady using the pay telephone and I ask [sic] her if I could use it when she hung up and she said it was out of order and I tried to use it but with no success."
Florer: "So I rode up the elevator with this lady and got off on the third floor with this lady and we walked to the information desk and this lady went on back to her department, to her spot. So then I, there was a lady at the information desk and I asked her if I could borrow her phone and she said that all the lines were busy or something to that effect."
Braden: "I ask [sic] her how I can get out of the building and she said that there is an exit right there and then she said wait a minute here is an elevator now. I got on the elevator and returned to the ground floor and the colored man who ran the elevator said you are a stranger in this building and I am not supposed to let you up and he ran outside to an officer and said to the officer that he had just taken me up and down in the elevator and the officer said for me to identify myself and I presented him with a credit card and he said we'll have to check out everything and took me to his superior and said for me to wait and we will check it out."
Florer: "So I stood there for a minute and a fellow walked up to me. He asked me what I wanted and he told me that I couldn't use the phone. So I walked back down to the elevator and rode it back down to the lobby. As soon as I got to the lobby I walked back outside and the fellow I had talked to about using the phone was pointing out the window, pointing toward me and said that I was the man that was on the third floor. At this time two officers walked up and said for me to come with them."
All indications are, then, that Braden and Florer were considered to be suspicious merely as a result of their presence in the Dal-Tex Building. It stretches credibility that the similarities in their police statements resulted from chance; their encounters with a lady in front of the Dal-Tex Building suggest that Braden and Florer were standing together, or in close juxtaposition, when one or both of them approached her. Alternatively, this was a shared cover story to explain their presence in that building. Several researchers have discussed the possibility that shots were fired from there [e.g. 14-16].
In his book Triangle of Fire, Bob Goodman stated that the west side of the Dal-Tex building, i.e. facing Dealey Plaza, housed the offices of the Dallas Uranium and Oil company on the third floor [17]. Although believed to be owned by H.L. Hunt, Dallas Uranium and Oil was not a registered company and appears to have been a "front" [17].
In a photograph of the crowd in Dealey Plaza minutes after the shooting, snapped by Dallas Times Herald photographer William Allen, an individual is visible in a trench coat, wide-brimmed hat and dark glasses. Dallas Chief Criminal Deputy Alan Sweatt, who assisted in processing Dealey-Plaza witnesses, identified him as Jim Braden [18]. Indeed, comparison with an earlier mug-shot of Eugene Hale Brading reveals a likeness.
Several books on the assassination include photographs of a man in black-rimmed eyeglasses, purported to be Mr. Florer. The original identification of this individual as Florer appears to have been made in the pages of the Dallas Times Herald [19], yet other discussion of that newspaper story indicates that the man in "horn-rimmed glasses" at whom bystanders shouted, "I hope you die," was not identified by name [20]. In 1992, Goodman contacted an individual suspected of being the man in horn-rimmed glasses, presumably Larry Florer, only to be informed that the man was under legal counsel and instructed not to talk [21]. (Attempts to contact Mr. Goodman via his publisher were fruitless.)
In his police statement, Florer gave his age as 23, and although, in another photograph by William Allen (see below), his unlined complexion is consistent with that, the overall impression is of a man in his 30s. The putative Florer looked like Theodore (Ted) Shackley with his hair dyed. At the time of the assassination, Shackley (AKA the Blond Ghost because of his pallor) was about 35 years old and Station Chief of JM/WAVE in Miami, the headquarters of the CIA's huge Operation Mongoose, the single objective of which was to overthrow the regime of Fidel Castro in Cuba, by assassination if necessary. The vain efforts to kill Castro included collaboration with Mafia bosses.
In 1966, Shackley moved to Vientiane, Laos, to lead the CIA-backed Hmong tribes-people in their secret war with the North Vietnamese army [22]. This effort also was unsuccessful, with terrible loss of life among the Hmong. Mr. Shackley moved on to become CIA Station Chief in Saigon in late 1968. "