Fred Lee Crisman

[Ron Williams]

Who was it claimed Crisman was one of the tramps in the photos taken of them in Dealy Plaza. I think I read it in the Torbitt document. Was supposed to have been with Beckham and Osbourne being the other two tramps. I don't think it true just trying to see how that story came to be.

Magda,

This would be a good area for much further discussion, especially regarding the Torbitt Document.

Below are two items I posted on the JFK Research Forum in 2008.

These two items are mentioned in the time-line too, right near the end.

Ron Williams

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Fred Lee Crisman as a "Tramp" Candidate

I don’t know when photo analysts first started wondering if Fred Lee Crisman might be the “old tramp” but I will make a guess that it probably was one of the volunteers helping Jim Garrison and may have been Richard E. Sprague who at that time was accumulating his large collection of assassination photos. I have thought Sprague’s portrayal of Crisman in his book The Taking of America 1-2-3 is strange and I know some have looked on Sprague with some suspicion. For example, he was one of those that Vincent Salandria labeled an “agent” at one time…

On page 289 of A Farewell to Justice, Joan Mellen has:

Garrison was prevented from focusing effectively on …Fred Lee Crisman by inept investigative work. Richard E. Sprague insisted that Crisman, like Bradley, was one of the tramps arrested at Dealey Plaza…

In a footnote Mellen writes this was stated in a January 9, 1969, memo from Sprague to Fred Newcomb.

In The Taking of America 1-2-3, Richard Sprague doesn’t write that Crisman is the “old tramp” or that he appears in any of the tramp photos, he only writes that Crisman was a spotter for one of the shooter teams and that he “and the tall tramp followed Frenchy’s route into the boxcars.”

However the idea of Fred Lee Crisman as one of the tramps got started, it did result in a lot of confusion and time wasting…

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Fred Lee Crisman in the Torbitt Document

Much confusion and the wasting of time has been the result of Fred Lee Crisman’s name appearing in the famous Torbitt Document (aka Nomenclature of an Assassination Cabal) that surfaced as an unpublished manuscript and was circulated among Kennedy assassination researchers around 1970.

This mention of Crisman included some truth, some things that may be true, and some information that is wildly inaccurate. The author has Crisman all mixed up and confused with the shadowy Albert Alexander Osborne:

[COLOR="Blue"]Osborne, alias John Howard Bowen, was discovered to have another person working with him who also used the alias John Howard Bowen. The second person also traveling as Bowen was Fred Lee Crismon, another agent for the munitions makers police agency, the Defense Industrial Security Command. Crismon also posed as a missionary and also used other aliases. Among the cognomens for Crismon were Fred Lee, Jon Gould and Jon Gold.

Osborne and Crismon also bore a marked resemblance and appeared to be about the same age. Crismon was a Syrian immigrant and had been closely associated with Osborne since the 1920's.

Crismon, Osborne and their riflemen charges in Mexico were based at Clint Murchison's huge ranch when not posing as missionaries in other areas of Mexico. Murchison and J. Edgar Hoover were closer than twin brothers at Del Charro Hotel, adjacent to Murchison's horse race tracks at La Jolla, California over the ten years preceding the 1963 murder. Hoover, fraudulently charged over $40,000.00 of his personal bills at Del Charro to Del Hi-Taylor Oil Company, a Murchison corporation.*[/COLOR]

The thing I find interesting about this entry is that the part about Crisman being a Syrian immigrant and being about the same age as Osborne misses the mark by a mile but at least one of the names Crisman used, Jon Gold, is accurate and was very current. As we now know, Crisman was born in Tacoma, Washington, and he was not Syrian and he was thirty-two years younger than Albert Osborne, but he did use the name “Dr. Jon Gold” for his talk radio show “The Round Table Forum” that ran on radio station KAYE in Puyallup, Washington, from August of 1968 to early in 1970. So whoever authored this part of “Torbitt” did have at least some accurate and very current information about the real Fred Lee Crisman.

And then of course we have the claim that wasted huge amounts time for HSCA investigators and still is causing confusion today, that of Crisman being one of the “Three Tramps” arrested and marched through Dealey Plaza and caught by news photographers shortly after the assassination. The HSCA investigators eventually established that Crisman was actually teaching school that day in Rainier, Oregon.

[COLOR="Blue"]The chain of evidence connecting Albert Osborne, Fred Lee Crismon, alias John M. Bowen, Permindex, and his co-workers became iron clad when a Black Star photographer snapped a picture a few minutes after the assassination of Crismon, alias Bowen, and two of his charges in the process of being arrested by two young Dallas police officers at Dealey Plaza. Fritz later released all three. The Crismon, alias Bowen, arrest picture received limited public distribution in 1969 when it was published in the Midlothian Mirror by Penn Jones, the Texas editor.

[tramp photo image]

Co-Director of the Mexico based assassins, John H. Bowen, alias Fred Lee Crismon, alias Free Lee, alias Jon Gould, alias Jon Gold, and Thomas Beckam, front, and another assassin in the process of being arrested at Dealey Plaza immediately after the assassination.

One of Crismon's Mexican professionals, Manuel Gonzales, firing from the fence to Kennedy's right side struck the President in the right temple killing him instantly...[/color]

The last section that mentions Crisman contains a number of intriguing claims, some true, he did work for Boeing, he did use “church cover,” and he did do some work to help Gypsies; some false, the “Tramp” claims again; and some unknown or unclear, his being connected with DISC, and Garrison’s claims of him working for “the industrial warfare complex.”

[COLOR="Blue"]Garrison; had traced DISC into its larger umbrella, Division Five of the FBI and the Defense Intelligence Agency supervised by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon. Here is how Garrison's statement came about. On October 31, 1968, Jim Garrison subpoenaed a Tacoma, Washington man for questioning in his continuing investigation of the John F. Kennedy assassination.

Fred Lee Crismon, a "bishop" of the Universal Life Church, was called to appear before the Orleans Parish Grand Jury on November 21, 1968. Garrison's office said that Crismon "has been engaged in undercover activity for a part of the industrial warfare complex for years. His cover is that of a 'preacher' and a 'person engaged in work to help the Gypsies.'"

Garrison's statement continued, "Our information indicates that since the early sixties, Crismon has made many trips to the New Orleans and Dallas areas in connection with his undercover work. He is a 'former' employee of the Boeing Aircraft Company in the sense that one defendant in the case is a 'former' employee of the Lockheed Aircraft Company in Los Angeles. In intelligence terminology, this ordinarily means that the connection still exists, but that the 'former employee' has moved into an underground operation."

Garrison said that evidence has been developed indicating a relationship between Crismon and "persons involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy."

Garrison further reiterated the general findings of his controversial investigation. "President Kennedy was murdered by elements of the industrial warfare complex working in concert with individuals in the United States Government. At the time of his murder, President Kennedy was working to end the Cold War.

The annual income of the defense industry was well over twenty billion dollars a year, and there were forces in that industry and in the U.S. Government which opposed the ending of the Cold War."

As has been pointed out earlier, Fred Lee Crismon used the alias John Howard Bowen and traveled and worked with the Mexico based assassins, Albert Osborne, Thomas Beckham and others. Bowen, alias Crismon, and Becham are shown in photographs taken November 22, 1963. In the picture on page 48, they are shown being taken after arrest by Dallas police across Dealey Plaza immediately after the President's murder.

Fred Lee Crismon, alias John H. Bowen, alias Dr. Jon Gold, and his partner, Thomas Edward Beckham, and Albert Osborne were all working for the Defense Industrial Security Command through the American Council of Christian Churches.

…Crismon, alias John H. Bowen, and Beckham played only small roles in the big picture, but not Jack Ruby and Ferenc Nagy. Jack Ruby, agent for DISC through the Mafia and Syndicate had to be in the basement of Dallas City Hall two days after the assassination to dispose of a dangerous witness.[/COLOR]

* - the quotes are taken from the published version: NASA, NAZIS & JFK: THE TORBITT DOCUMENT & THE JFK ASSASSINATION, by Kenn Thomas, Adventures Unlimited Press, 1996, pp. 114, 130-131, 145-147

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