Why discussion of Postal Money Order processing marks accepts it was authentic at all

[David Josephs]

SOP for most JFK discussion with the opposition is their assumption of some inauthentic fact as real evidence. Talking about Ozzie's rifle skills assumes he was firing.


The PMO is another case in point.




The most unimpeachable evidence for the authentication of this PMO is the concurrently filled out and stamped stub which matches it and is retained in a book showing PMO #'s prior to and after the one used as evidence.

This was not only not offered, but has never been found. Like the Order for the rifle in the first place, only that order exists and only this PMO exists from a continuous string of numbered documents.

So even before we bother with the bona fides of this document and the convoluted/tortured way it comes into being, it has no connection to its origin - the book of PMO's.

If no other "cancelled thru the FRB system" PMO in that book can be found - how can it be said our PMO is authentic?

What follows must, by definition, be activities designed to allow this PMO to be created, correctly... Please let's not be so foolish as to believe the USPS was not helping our intelligence agencies create "documents" which would check out as "authentic" within their own little world... since other orders or similar SOP are never reviewed - authenticity is a self fulfilling feature of the Evidence.


Harry Holmes' theater of the absurd is the basis for this nonsense.


So I see this as the simple acquisition of

• the Klein's stamp (check - Friday night),
  
• the Dallas GPO Stamp (check - Holmes is at the GPO),
  
• a Blank book of PMO's (check - they're at the GPO),
  
• access to the machinery of the USPS (check),
  
• 1st Bank of Chicago processing stamp (ooops - Wilmouth not only didn't give that up but tells us the deposit info he saw does not match the Waldman exhibit),
  
• time and confusion (check)
  
• cooperation of USPS expert in the processes and procedures for PMO's. (check - DVP links to Marks' bona fides via Scully)
  
• agencies cooperating to generate the evidence required to keep us from WWIII (check - FBI USPS USSS all create intertwined reports that double speak their way thru this critical evidence)
  
• someone to retrieve the PMO who would also disappear into history (check - Robert Jackson; Richard Jackson of the NOLA USPS testifies as does Robert Jackson a Dallas News photographer... just not the man charged with entering the Archives at 9pm on a Sat and acquire the one item which connects the payment and delivery of the assassination rifle to the accused.. in TX where he could have paid cash for any weapon he wanted - uh, right)
  

All the debating in the world will not produce the one item that MUST EXIST for this item to be real. Without it, discussing the stamps, marks and holes is superfluous
Not only do we not have it, but it and the book of PMOs were never offered as evidence at any time - nor can I seem to find a question put to Holmes related to the PMO book, stub




Harry Holmes:
In those days, postal money orders were issued in a book of paper money orders which, when you bought a money order, the clerk put the amount and the date, then you had a template that you put on that tore off at $10, not more than $15, or whatever. The clerk then ripped that off and handed it to the customer while the stub was retained which matched the money. All this was to be filled out in your own handwriting.

It wasn't ten minutes that they hollered, "Eureka!" They had the stub!
I called it in immediately to the chief on the open line to Washington and said, "I've got the money order number that Oswald used to buy this gun, and according to the records up there, they had shipped it to this box that he had rented at the main office in Dallas at that time, which he later closed and opened another at the Terminal Annex because it was closer to the School Book Depository."
So he said, "Well, we'll run that right through the correlators or whatever they do up there." In about an hour, he called back and said, "We've got it! Both the FBI and the Secret Service labs have positively identified the handwriting as being that of Oswald."

Mr. BELIN. So what happened?
Mr. HOLMES. So in about an hour Postal Inspector McGee of Chicago called back then and said that the correct amount was $21.95---$21.45 excuse me, and that the shipping---they had received this money order on March the 13th, whereas I had been looking for March 20.
So then I passed the information to the men who were looking for this money order stub to show which would designate, which would show the number of the money order, and that is the only way you could find one.
I relayed this information to them and told them to start on the 13th because he could have bought it that morning and that he could have gotten it by airmail that afternoon, so they began to search and within 10 minutes they called back and said they had a money order in that amount issued on, I don't know that I show, but it was that money order in an amount issued at the main post office, which is the same place as this post office box was at that time, box 2915 and the money order had been issued early on the morning of March the 12th, 1963.

Mr. HOLMES. I gave that information to my boss by telephone. He called Washington immediately. Of course this information included the money order number. This number was transmitted by phone to the chief inspector in Washington, who immediately got the money order center at Washington to begin a search, which they use IBM equipment to kick out this money order, and about 7 o'clock Saturday night they did kick out the original money order and sent it over by, so they said, by special conveyance to the Secret Service, chief of Secret Service at Washington now, and it turned out, so they said, to be the correct money order. I asked them by phone as to what it said on it, and it said it had been issued to A. J. Hidell, which to me then was the tip that I had the correct money order. Up to then I didn't know whether I had the correct money order or not.


To round it out - the EXPERT who was so instrumental with one Mail order weapon appears to know his limitations and steers clear of the US MAIL ORDERED pistol...

Mr. BELIN. Is there anything else that we haven't covered that you think might be helpful here and you think we ought to talk about, Mr. Holmes? Have you found now in your records the money order number that was involved in the purchase of the rifle?
Mr. HOLMES. The money order number that was found in Washington and matched the original money order was number 2--202--130--462, issued at the main office in Dallas, Tex., on March 12, 1963, in the amount of $21.45.
Mr. BELIN. Do you have any information on the money order for the pistol or how the pistol was paid for, or was there a money order?
Mr. HOLMES. No, sir.