Ralph Yates

[Albert Doyle]

I find it unfortunate that Lee Farley has decided to conduct himself the way he does in the debate over Ralph Yates' veracity. I did notice that Farley said the less said about Doyle the better. He then proceeded to make a post speaking about nothing but Doyle. But that's the problem, this issue isn't Doyle it's Ralph Yates and the evidence for his innocence. I find Farley's responses less than adequate and don't think they make any attempt to answer the main points in any direct way. I feel his emphasis on attacking me personally is a means by which he protects himself from giving serious treatment to the issues I raised. I think Lee's problem isn't with Doyle but the questions Doyle raises that Lee can't answer.

There's a couple of things that have to be cleared out in advance. That is that Lee isn't quite completely answering his unstated points or owning-up to them. His theory requires that Ralph Yates picked-up an ordinary hitch-hiker in some meaningless place and invented the story that this innocent hitch-hiker was the one who initiated the shooting Kennedy story and Ralph then went back to work and decided to invent a fantastic tale of this hitch-hiker repeating the same story they had discussed in a strange way. Yates is pretty good because not only did he pass a polygraph on this but stuck to this crazy hoax up to his death after 11 years of mental institution confinement. Lee has a really convincing theory there, huh?

I don't think Lee realizes he hasn't come close to answering the germane points. He seems to think we've unfairly questioned the FBI documents. He asks us to give them a chance instead of raising these 'pesky' points. The whole time recklessly giving no heed to the FBI's record in this case or how Yates' witnessing would be one of the foremost instances where FBI needed to radically change testimony due to the danger of what he witnessed. I feel a more insightful analysis of the 3rd paragraph would show that FBI had not formulated its strategy yet when they took Jones' deposition. They allowed too much straight recording of fact where they let the key critical Oswald evidence slip through in unadulterated form. I feel I have made a fairly good attempt at illustrating that evidence in my post #4 and Lee has not come anywhere close to answering it. He ignores the evidence I spelled-out and returns with the grossly oversimplified claim that we are not giving the FBI a chance. Frankly I think Farley has dismissed himself from credibility on this alone. Any look at his style will show there are two levels of discourse occurring here. One juvenile and mocking, as well as avoiding the main points, and another attempting a serious analysis of Yates. I think anyone with good sense can see Farley is emphasizing off-point personal barbs exactly because he can't answer the serious evidence.

What annoys me about Farley is that he totally ignores the lengthily spell-out context of Yates' polygraph and returns to bluntly quote the FBI's version. Lee should understand that the FBI has an agenda here. It's a basic thing that anyone claiming fidelity to "research standards" should understand. They have a purpose in diminishing Yates' polygraph because they are trying to avoid incriminating themselves by admitting Yates was telling the truth. It isn't like there aren't many examples of FBI doing that - not to mention the Warren Commission. As I already explained, and Lee totally ignored, decades later Dorothy Yates told a researcher that one of the FBI agents who did the polygraph pulled her aside and told her Ralph had passed the test and it showed he was telling the truth. If you had a good grasp of the Ralph Yates' story you would understand that FBI used this passing result to justify saying he was crazy because it showed he actually believed what he was saying and that since Oswald was at work it proved Yates was crazy. This is all part of the record. Why does Lee ignore it and focus on me instead of the arguments?

Lee then resorts to mocking dramatization and semantic emphasis. But never does he quite get around to answering that there is enough evidence to show that Yates and Jones did have this conversation. Instead Lee makes cosmetic, superficial arguments that never quite answer how the 3rd paragraph serves to prove this, which it does, as I showed in my post #4. When correctly viewed the Jones FBI document evidences an evolution of FBI forcing this evidence down and making the witnesses back-off their witnessing. My post #4 made arguments showing this and showing how the original information in paragraph 3 locked-in the real evidence that FBI then proceeded to incrementally distort and discredit. I believe I have made a firm case that this sniping discussion did happen and FBI did make efforts to deny it and avoid its implications. Lee returns with mockery while imploring us to trust the FBI murderers. Hmm.

Lee won't admit it but he has made arguments that subvert the true record of what happened during that conversation when Yates returned to work. He has diverted the discussion to specious accusations of Yates inventing embellishments afterwards in order to avoid recognizing the things the 3rd paragraph proves. We are right back to things I pointed-out that Lee hasn't adequately answered. That is, that the statements Jones told of were perfectly understandable for someone who had no idea of their significance 2 days prior to the assassination. I've already explained that it is perfectly reasonable for Yates, a blue collar worker, to not get involved with a presidential assassination. He could have figured the investigation would discover the things he witnessed and there was no need for him to suffer the predictable personal ordeals of getting involved. It wasn't until after Oswald was shot that Yates felt compelled to come forward. This is all perfectly understandable. So while saying he isn't blaming Yates, Lee ignores what I just wrote and proceeds to blame Yates while castigating me. Forgive me if I find Lee's responses less than convincing.

Lee also isn't being honest about what he wrote. Anyone who read his original post would see he clearly makes an effort to say when all was said and done Jones admitted the only thing Yates told him is that he picked-up a hitch-hiker. As many people have pointed-out Lee manages this by giving unquestioned heed to the FBI's documents and honoring what they did to both Jones and Yates in their interviews without question. I believe my post #4 more than proves this contention is false and that Jones revealed several key critical points of evidence that can't be so carelessly ignored. Lee then mangles context and says the package wasn't described. But if he read what I wrote more faithfully I made it more than clear that Yates had no reason to give a precise description of that package on the 20th since the assassination hadn't occured yet. Lee fails to answer the point. That point was that we have more than adequate evidence that Jones heard Yates tell of this hitch-hiker possessing a package on the 20th. This is a key critical piece of evidence that validates Yates. Lee's answer to it? He ignores it and calls me 'picky'. Lee also totally ignores my telling in post #4 how the description of "window shades" actually aids Yates' credibility instead of harming it. Clearly Lee offers a superficial discussion of the arguments themselves instead of actually answering what those arguments say.

I feel if Lee was making an honest effort to get to the truth he would have made more of an effort to answer my 4 key critical points of Oswald evidence 2 days in advance arguments. He made no effort whatsoever to address them. Here they are again:


{ Now that we've properly analyzed the correct context of Jones' interview we can show how it contains several key elements that prove Yates' witnessing was real. The document clearly confirms that 1) Yates told Jones he picked-up the hitch-hiker in Oak Cliff blocks from Oswald's boarding house. 2) Yates told Jones the man had a package. 3) Yates told Jones he dropped the man off at the Depository. 4) Yates told Jones that the man struck-up a conversation similar to the one Yates had with Jones about shooting someone coming up from the overpass with an easy shot. Except the hitch-hiker was talking about it being Kennedy on his visit. It was the reason Yates told Jones about it in the first place because of the bizarre coincidence. If you read carefully Jones admits he and Yates had this conversation about sniping someone in the Plaza. In their rush to judgment doubters somehow never get around to admitting this or its relevance.

What this document proves is that Yates managed to nail 4 key critical points of assassination evidence 2 days prior to the assassination. The true assassination research interpretation of this is that it would be statistically impossible for anyone to nail 4 key critical pieces of Oswald-related Kennedy assassination evidence 2 days prior by chance. The statistical probability would be in the impossible range. Doubters try to get rid of this fact by improperly suggesting Yates should have come-up with all the precise details on the day of his witnessing. But these doubters ignore the fact that Yates, 2 days prior to the assassination, would have no reason to give details that were only relevant 2 days later when Oswald was accused of shooting Kennedy. }




So although Lee did say Yates only told Jones he picked-up a hitch-hiker, even if Lee won't admit it, my arguments above fairly reasonably show that isn't true and there are serious evidentiary consequences to what Yates actually did say. Lee allows himself the privilege of ignoring this while attacking my efforts and suggesting he is practicing the more sound version of analysis. In short Lee hasn't given adequate response to the quote above and that pretty much sums up the failure of his theory. Any reasonable person can see the key evidence Yates discussed 2 days prior to the assassination is in the infinite range as far as possibility. There is no way any person making-up a hoax, as Lee contends, would be able to nail 4 key points of Oswald evidence 2 days in advance as Yates did and this proves his innocence, as does Lee's inability to give this any credible response. Saying the FBI documents showed Jones retracted his account is reckless and doesn't give heed to what the original statement captured. Jones clearly said in paragraph 3 that Yates told him those things ON THAT DAY. Lee's response is a pleading for us to ignore this and trust the FBI's trying to get rid of this admission. He's not serious??? Any person actually practicing the so-called "research standards" Lee invokes would see the things said in paragraph 3 could not be retracted without serious explanation. Neither Lee nor Jones offer any such explanation.

This is a debate over the accuracy of Ralph Yates' story. It has serious consequences towards the assassination and is one of the foremost, right out there in the open examples of gov't wrongdoing in the assassination, which is why Douglass correctly cites it. I don't see how anyone could say they don't have any dog in the hunt on this seeing how important a case of assassination evidence it is. I mean that person usually doesn't shy away from these things. Nor would that person survive their own methods if they were turned towards this subject.


.

[Albert Doyle]

I can't find any transcript of Dave Martin's interview on Google. I may have embellished the Dorothy Yates coming forward because of Stone's movie part - but it was in that era of immunity that she came forward. Her statement does show remorse for her ignorance at the time.


Here's Martin's article:



http://www.dcdave.com/article5/120418.htm

[Miles Scull]

http://i150.photobucket.com/albums/s115/...c5643c.jpg

[Miles Scull]

http://www.dcdave.com/

[Albert Doyle]

On January 2, 1964, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover sent a teletype marked "URGENT" to Dallas Special Agent in Charge J. Gordon Shanklin on Ralph Leon Yates. Hoover noted that a previous FBI investigation into whether Yates may have been at his company at the same time he said he picked up the Oswald-like hitchhiker provided insufficient evidence "to completely discredit Yates' story." Hoover therefore ordered the Dallas FBI office to "reinterview Yates with polygraph," the instrument more commonly known as a "lie detector."

On January 4 in another "URGENT" teletype, Shanklin reported back to Hoover on Yates's polygraph examination that day: "Results of test were .inconclusive as Yates responded to neither relevant or control type questions." Because his lie-detector test was inconclusive, Yates had still not been discredited. But there was more to come.

During his final, January 4 trip to the FBI office, Ralph Yates was accompanied by his wife, Dorothy. He had asked her to come with him. In an interview forty-two years later, she told me what happened next to her husband. After he completed his (inconclusive) lie-detector test, she said, the FBI told him he needed to go immediately to Woodlawn Hospital, the Dallas hospital for the mentally ill. He drove there with Dorothy. He was admitted that evening as a psychiatric patient. From that point on, he spent the remaining eleven years of his life as a patient in and out of mental health hospitals.

A crucial transition in the psychic health of Ralph Yates seems to have occurred at the FBI office on January 4, 1964. Something the FBI said after Ralph's polygraph test puzzled and disturbed Dorothy:

"They told me that he was telling the truth [according to the polygraph machine], but that basically he had convinced himself that he was telling the truth. So that's how it came out. He strongly believed it, so it came out that way."

According to what the FBI told Dorothy Yates, the data that registered on the polygraph machine, as then read in the normal way by the polygraph examiner, showed that Ralph Yates was telling the truth. His test was officially recorded as "inconclusive" (meaning the examiner wasn't sure if Yates was telling the truth) only because J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI had decided what the truth had to be for Yates. The FBI-defined truth was that Yates had not picked up the Oswald-like hitchhiker with the "curtain rods" package, because for the FBI there could be no such hitchhiker. Therefore Ralph Leon Yates, by being so definitive (as shown by his polygraph chart) In knowing that he did precisely thatpicked up a nonexistent hitchhikercould only have lost touch with reality. What for any other polygraphed person would serve as proof of truth-telling was, in the case of Yates, proof only of an illusory divorce from reality. The wrenching but undeniable truth for Yates, that he helped a man he thought was the president's assassin deliver what could have been his weapon to the Book Depository, was what compelled him to contact the FBI in the first place. Now he was being told his experience was nothing but an illusion. The FBI said so. Because of Yates's unswerving, polygraphed conviction to the contrary, that he knew what really happened, J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI knew what they had to do. They told him to report at once to a psychiatric hospital.

Exactly what happened to Ralph Yates in the following days as a patient at Woodlawn Hospital, Dorothy Yates did not witness and does not know.

She does know that early one morning about a week later, Ralph broke out of Woodlawn. At 4:00 A.M. she opened the front door of their house to find Ralph standing barefoot on the steps in his white hospital cIothes. Snow was swirling around him. Ralph told Dorothy he had escaped from the mental institution. He said he tied sheets together and climbed down from a window. He had then stolen a car and driven home.

Ralph was tormented by fear in a way Dorothy would see repeated for years. He told his wife someone was trying to kill them and their children because of what he knew about Oswald. She quickly bundled up their five sleepy children, the oldest of whom was six. Ralph drove his family away from their house in the stolen car. Within a few hours, Dorothy was more alarmed by her husband's frantic efforts to evade their murder at every turn than she was by any unidentified killers. She returned the car and reported his whereabouts to the Woodlawn Hospital authorities.

Ralph was picked up and returned to Woodlawn. He was soon transferred to Terrell State Hospital, a psychiatric facility about thirty miles east of Dallas, where he lived for eight years. He was then transferred to the Veterans Hospital in Waco for a year and a half, and finally to Rusk State Hospital for the final year and a half of his life. While a patient at all three hospitals, he spent intermittent periods of from one to three months at home with his wife and children. He was never able to work again.

In the course of Ralph's psychiatric treatment, Dorothy said, he was given the tranquilizing drugs Thorazine and Stelazine to the point where "they made him walk around like a zombie." He learned to resist the process. Just as Abraham Bolden had done in the Springfield Penitentiary psychiatric unit, Ralph faked swallowing the pills.

More difficult to avoid were the shock treatments. He received over forty of them. The impact of the shock treatments on his long-range memory was, his wife said, "evidently nothing, because he didn't forget what he was there for," his encounter with the hitchhiker he had dropped off at Elm and Houston.

Ralph told Dorothy, "I don't know if they're trying to make me forget what's happened, or what. But I'm always going to say those things happened."

To the end of his life Ralph held on to the truth of his experience with the hitchhiker carrying the curtain rods. "He never backed down," Dorothy said.

Ralph died at Rusk State Hospital on September 3, 1975, from congestive heart failure. He was thirty-nine years old.

Over three decades later, Dorothy continues to ponder her husband's stubborn adherence to a strange story that in effect made him a prisoner in mental hospitals, took him away from a family he loved, and impoverished all of them. He was haunted by an experience he couldn't forget, for which he then suffered the rest of his life because of his unwillingness to recant it. Other relatives and friends dismissed Ralph's account of the Oswald-like hitchhiker with the curtain rods package as pure fantasy.

His uncle, J.O. Smith, who went with him on his first trip to the FBI office, said of his nephew's story, "I really thought that was all just imagination."

His cousin, Ken Smith, remembers Ralph before Kennedy's death as nothing more than "a chain-smoker who watched football games." Once Ralph had what he thought was his Oswald experience, Ken said, he became a man obsessed:

"He wouldn't let it go. He believed it to be true. This consumed Ralph. His thinking didn't go beyond that afterwards. This just totally destroyed his life.

"Ralph blamed himself for Kennedy's assassination. He said, 'I was the reason the President got killed.'

"If he had shut up, his life wouldn't have been so bad'. Everybody thought he was crazy. So he became crazy."

Even Ralph's co-worker and corroborating witness, Dempsey Jones, who confirmed to the FBI that Yates told him at least one day before the assassination about the hitchhiker's talk on shooting the president, was skeptical. As the FBI liked to point out, he added a disclaimer: "[Jonesj said Yates is a big talker who always talks about a lot of foolishness."

Only the FBI knew why Ralph Yates needed to be taken seriously. Not even Yates himself, who had no sense of an Oswald double, understood the significance of what he felt compelled to say for the rest of his life. Only the Federal Bureau of Investigation recognized the importance of his testimony, with the threat it posed to the government's case against Oswald. If evidence surfaced of the Oswald-like hitchhiker, who delivered his "curtain rods" to the Depository two days before the assassination, it would have preempted and brought into question the government-endorsed curtain rods story, as given by Buell Wesley Frazier. Thanks to the bungling redundancy of cover stories, the plot to kill the president was again in danger of exposure.

There were too many Oswalds in view, with too many smuggled rifles, retelling a familiar story to too many witnesses. At least one curtain rods story, and the disposable witness who heard it, had to go. The obvious person to be jettisoned was the hapless Ralph Yates. His stubborn insistence on what he knew he had seen and heard, from the man he had given a ride, had to be squelched.

Ralph Yates then went through eleven years of hell. Yet he could not forget, and would not stop speaking about, what he witnessed when he picked up the man he thought was Lee Harvey Oswald. Without ever understanding the full meaning of the experience he refused to renounce, Ralph Leon Yates was a witness to the unspeakable.

What flies right past Lee is the fact the first paragraph shows FBI DID try to corroborate Yates' trip to Oak Cliff. If you read Dave Martin's description you'll see Hoover specifically told Shanklin that efforts to disprove Yates' presence at the hitch-hiking incident had failed. If you read Hoover's words in correct context they send the message to Shanklin that they are trying to discredit Yates and his story. A good researcher will see that this coloring of the investigation is similar to the FBI transcript of Jones' interview starting with the quote 'Ralph was a big talker who talked a lot of foolishness'. The intent is clearly to discredit Yates and tint the entire interview with doubt. With this in mind there's no doubt that Hoover's instruction to apply a lie detector test is in furtherance of this attempt to discredit Yates.

When Shanklin reported back to Hoover that Yates failed to even respond to test questions and that the results were "inconclusive" he was obviously obeying orders and avoiding reporting what the FBI agents who did the test told Dorothy Yates, that is, that Yates had passed the test and that it showed he was telling the truth. Shanklin is using dirty FBI tactics to try to scuttle the polygraph test by showing it didn't give valid control question results. This is a tactic to discredit the actual test itself because any close examination of it would show Yates was telling the truth. After all, you can't commit someone to a mental institution for inconclusiveness. The FBI clearly told Dorothy that they had to commit Ralph to the asylum because the test conclusively showed he thought he was telling the truth and since the reality of Oswald being at work proved this was impossible therefore Yates was insane by definition. If you're paying attention, the form of the procedure of what they did to Yates tells you he passed the test. But we aren't guessing anyway because Dorothy specifically said the FBI agent told her Ralph passed the test. Or are we now going to attack Dorothy Yates too for the sake of "research standards"?

The FBI wasn't quite dehumanized to Nazi methods when they pulled this evil Gestapo stuff on Yates. It's not entirely possible to drain all your agents of their democratic humanity when doing such evil things. Like in many other cases of FBI telegrams involving the assassination, their corrupted contents didn't quite match what people were saying. What happened with Dorothy Yates is the FBI agent slipped and spoke the truth because he was touched by what they were doing to Dorothy's husband and needed to console her with the truth. As he told Dorothy, Ralph had passed the test. Only a blind researcher would not see this for what it obviously is. Martin then deftly applies the correct and academic conclusions to the story and its evidence.

I like the part about the FBI needed to jettison Yates because he refused to back-down off his story. Martin suggests poor Ralph Yates never realized what he witnessed was all explained by a CIA double trying to frame Oswald, only the plotters got too zealous and became sloppy forgetting they could entrap themselves by having Oswald witnessed at work at the same time they were trying to frame him. Perhaps they bungled because the more important issue was getting the Carcano into the Depository?

I don't see how any researcher could reach around the obvious and try to question Yates' story when any simple analysis shows what he witnessed was obviously true and that he accurately reported it and was murdered for it like many other witnesses. Now that it's fairly obvious that FBI told Dorothy Ralph passed the test I think Lee should try answering the 4 key critical points of Oswald-related evidence argument I made. I think it obviates any need to inappropriately question Yates' polygraph results. I think there's some very good researchers out there, including Lee Farley, however whether by boredom or overzealous research when they start turning against some of the worst and most meaningful victims like Vinson, Pitzer, and Yates, it's really too much. DiEugenio? Well, he's just AWOL again when it counts the most. - What can you do?

[Albert Doyle]

I think any smart researcher can see Lee Farley is seeking the quickest excuse out of the evidence he can find and not applying the best form of inquiry one who is seeking the truth would apply. Lee should be proud of himself because he has earned himself a place right along side the likes of David Von Pein and Vinny Bugliosi in his approach.

When examining the 4 key critical pieces of evidence that confirm Yates it is obvious that they accumulatively, in combination, create a convergence of evidence that proves Yates' story. Lee might think he's being clever but it is actually he who fails to meet the criteria of evidence in disproving those critical pieces of evidence.

For instance Lee tries to say that the entrance ramp to the Thornton Expressway was in an area common to transients who might hitch-hike with a package. Well that doesn't come close to answering the convergence of facts I showed. The truth is Oak Cliff was home to a lot of important assassination events. Oswald's boarding house was there as was the Tippit shooting. I think Jack Ruby had an apartment there as well. Lee tries to force all this out of his arguments and pretend it doesn't exist just like he tries to eliminate the true nature of FBI documents and their truthfulness. Lee asks us to shop for diamonds in bead shops. The hitch-hiker came from the right direction Lee. I think we're well in the ballpark there, despite your efforts to deny it.

I don't find Lee's approach very credible because if one was analyzing the pick-up point correctly one would have to include the fact Yates said the hitch-hiker was identical in appearance to Lee Harvey Oswald. Lee ignores this and hopes his counter-arguments will suffice, however one has to remember that Yates passed a polygraph on this. Now that's damned-good for someone who Lee is contending fabricated this Oswald similarity in order to embellish his story later-on. And let's just ignore, as Lee does, the fact that many other Dallas citizens witnessed Oswald doubles trying to set-up Oswald or acting suspiciously.

Lee isn't being quite honest about the package either. He's now backed-off his previous claim that Yates only told Jones of picking-up a hitch-hiker in his normal manner. He's doing it without saying it directly or admitting it. But that's not how it works. The truth is the context of that package exists in combination with the several other key points like Oak Cliff and the Oswald look-alike. This honest evaluation, that includes all these things in combination, as it properly should, shows that a person who was confirmed as having the shooting Kennedy conversation on the 20th is a person who, if they looked like Oswald, and were trying to set him up like other look-alikes were recorded as doing, would make the significance of this package much more incriminating. Lee, of course, ignores all this and tries to force this object as simply being a non-descript package. Lee also ignores the fact Yates would have no reason to describe the package as gun-like 2 days before the assassination. In my opinion the full universe of coincidences I just pointed out precludes any such deficient analysis.

Lee once again commits a logical offense by asking why Yates didn't describe the package as either window shades or curtain rods on the 20th. I'll point-out, once again, that it is Lee who hasn't provided the credible evidence because he has yet to show why Yates would need to describe the package that way on the 20th 2 days prior to the assassination? As I pointed-out before Lee is unfairly holding Yates to describing the exact dimensions and contents of the package 2 days prior to the assassination when he wouldn't have any reason to do so. Again, this aids Yates' credibility because it shows he described it to Jones as a person would 2 days prior. Instead of seeing it this way Lee holds it against Yates. Also, it could be that Ralph Yates was an authority-trusting person. It very well may be that Yates saw Wade mis-speak and say "window shades". He may then have felt the authorities had it right and he mis-remembered it as curtain rods. Lee is blinded by his doubt and doesn't see how easily these conflicts can be explained while Ralph Yates stays as true as his polygraph. To dismiss Yates' story on that alone is not as much a dismissal of Yates as it is the researcher who does it.

Like with the FBI documents, Lee comes in and tries to sell us that the Depository is yet another easily explained away coincidence in a chain of such coincidences. A chain he never links together while trying to isolate and disprove its individual members. However I think I read that Yates said he last saw this Oswald look-alike strolling towards the Book Depository. While Lee tries to disingenuously reduce this to a mere transit point a more credible detective would not miss the overwhelming significance of this location when combined with everything else. Lee makes a very weak sale in a foolishly patronizing manner. It's obvious flaw is that it fails to consider this location in combination with all the other key points. If Lee wants to contend he has disproven those points individually, so therefore he doesn't have to consider them together, I would object that he has done no such thing. He hasn't disproven that Yates picked-up this ringer at the entrance ramp. An honest person then admits the situation falls back to a general consideration of all the remaining facts. So the end result is, while Lee simply has contrived gratuitous doubt and nothing as a result, those 4 key critical pieces of evidence still best his arguments and still stand as an unignorably occurring set of critical facts. To me Lee's arguments have the feel of trying to pick out those pesky gold nuggets so we can collect the cow manure.

I think Lee's form gives him away because he seems to be arguing things that are trivial and unrelated to the main arguments. He seems to go right to the superficial or irrelevant. If he was actually trying to answer the arguments instead of evade them he would realize the significance of Yates having that conversation with Jones and how it relates to the evidence. The 3rd paragraph of the FBI Jones interview confirms without a doubt that Yates told Jones he had this conversation with the hitch-hiker on the 20th. It was part of the reason why Yates told Jones of this event upon returning to work. I don't think Lee understands it is completely irrelevant and meaningless to the evidence that Yates may have initiated the conversation about Kennedy's reception in Dallas after the Stevenson event. It doesn't make any difference. This is an example of the points Lee gravitates towards in order avoid the ones he doesn't want to recognize. What Lee doesn't include is what followed when that hitch-hiker struck-up an awkard conversation about it being possible to shoot Kennedy on his visit to Dallas from a surrounding office building. Yates felt uncomfortable with that conversation and tried to switch the topic. Boy, it sure is funny how the random transient Lee claims acted exactly like other Oswald framers when he persisted with this conversation. And since Lee practices such a high form of research we can just throw out the crashingly obvious similarity of shooting Kennedy with a high powered rifle from an office building to Milteer and the possibility that this was ongoing conspiratorial scuttlebutt amongst the assassination underground. Scuttlebutt being used by those who were framing Oswald. No need to get involved with crazy accumulative evidence speculation like that I guess.

Lee decided to avoid the Dorothy Yates issue in his response. If we were to honor that accumulative evidence we would find that Martin's evidence shows Yates passed his polygraph. Once you realize FBI lied about this it puts their documents in true perspective vs Ralph Yates. At that point anyone who ignores this while continuing to endorse FBI's records is simply relinquishing their credibility. They have reason to ignore the Dorothy Yates issue because once you realize Yates passed his polygraph it is like the final crystal being placed into the device that lights up the whole thing. Again, to argue this honestly you have to include ALL the pertinent facts and how they relate to each other. I think Lee has conspicuously failed to do that.

[Miles Scull]

If Yates' account was invented, then Yates would have had to have imagined out of thin air details of the assassination that Yates had no way of knowing before the 22nd:


1.) assassin is a young man

2.) assassin is connected to Oak Cliff

3.) assassin is connected to the location of Houston & Elm

4.) assassin is carrying a package before the assassination

5.) assassin is to have talked about shooting POTUS with a rifle from a building as POTUS drives by the building


For Yates to have reported these details to Jones before the 22nd means that the odds of Yates inventing these details out of thin air are 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000, etc.

In other words Yates told the truth. :gossip:

[Albert Doyle]

It's almost like Miles read my mind because I was going to mention that there is actually a 5th key piece of evidence here. Yates said the hitch-hiker kept asserting this awkward conversation even though he tried to change the subject. Once you realize the hitch-hiker persisted at engaging this conversation he fits the profile of other descriptions of Oswald-framers in Dallas going out of their way to make sure those they were spooking got the message. So technically this is a 5th example of corroborated factors. Lee tries to question this piecemeal but the obvious fact is, when viewed correctly in combination, they constitute a convergence of evidence beyond chance. The statistical odds of these factors being coincidence is impossible which is why Lee refuses to recognize this directly. I'm sorry but we don't need to see Dorothy Yates' testimony verbatim at this point. This is proof in my opinion.

Add to this already credible proof the fact Yates passed a lie detector test and you are standing squarely within firm proof. What Lee fails to allow is the fact Dorothy said the FBI agent told her Ralph passed the test. Doubting Lee says he needs to see the transcript. Again, indirectly calling Dorothy Yates and Martin liars. It's a simple thing. Yates passed the lie detector test but FBI couldn't admit this under Hoover's clandestine directive. FBI sought to discredit the entire test itself by saying Yates failed to register on the test questions. In Lee's ham-handed analysis he fails to see the necessary subtle clues here that FBI is seeking to discredit the entire test by throwing it out because it failed to meet even the basic criteria of test questions. You have to imagine that FBI asked Yates questions like "Did the hitch-hiker resemble Oswald?" and "Was the package long and shaped like curtain rods?" and, finally, "Did the hitch-hiker say they were curtain rods?" After these questions were answered and registered on the polygraph an FBI agent told Dorothy Yates Ralph had passed the test. I assume this means the polygraph confirmed these questions. So really, a true and more honest analysis would show Yates showed positive results on some very damning questions that put us even further into the realm of established fact. When an FBI agent pulls you aside and tells you your husband passed the polygraph and then they enter in their record that the test results were inconclusive you have to think they're trying to hide something. This doesn't bother Lee Farley.

What Farley is doing, like Lone Nutters, is he's trying to string together a long thread of incredible coincidences against the more pertinent facts. I cannot understand any assassination researcher who would have the bad lack of sense to go after an obvious victim like Ralph Yates. In this scenario you end up with a situation of defiant contrarian coincidences being demanded vs the common sense interpretation of undeniable key pieces of critical evidence. God help anyone who doesn't have the sense to see that or distinguish between the two. It's a fool's folly that only aids FBI in their evil purpose.

[Miles Scull]

I dare say the wanton and vicious destruction of innocent if inconvenient human beings is at work here in the Yates case. It reminds of the cases of Bolden, Nagell, Hicks, and of the more recent case of Susan Lindhauer (see: google).

In Yates' case one wonders what Yates' motive or purpose might ever have been to "invent" such an account. Was he seeking fraudulent fame and fortune for himself his wife and his five children? Well, if such were true, things certainly didn't turn out as he expected much to his horror.

If Yates couldn't be proved a liar and so incarcerated and so silenced, then he had to be chemically lobotomized.

[Albert Doyle]

Farley says he isn't holding Ralph Yates accountable for giving precise details 2 days prior to the assassination but then turns around and does exactly that. Right now he's fishing for evidence that Yates culled his curtain rod story from news reports after the assassination. But this doesn't answer what has already been shown. That Yates would have no reason to detail the precise dimensions of the package on the 20th. The simple explanation is that on the 20th Yates believed the ringer and thought they were curtain rods. On the 20th the fact the hitch-hiker possessed a package of curtain rods was irrelevant to the reason why Yates told Jones about this event. On the 20th Yates' motive was to tell Dempsey Jones that a weird hitch-hiker had struck-up the exact same conversation he had with Jones. An explanation of the precise details of the package would be irrelevant to Yates' motive at the time. So while exploiting this minimal description of the package on the 20th Lee then tries to assert the detailed description of curtains rods was due to news reports instead of Yates having the seriousness of what he witnessed dawn upon him.

But this all comes down to the lie detector test Farley ignores. One has to imagine that by the 5th interview FBI asked questions about all Yates' claims, including the curtain rods, similar appearance to Oswald, and other additional details. According to the FBI agent who pulled Dorothy Yates aside Ralph passed the test on these questions, therefore proving he had actually witnessed those events as described. Farley is stalling on this because he knows it seriously doesn't work for his doubting theories. However any honest appraisal of what we already know sees the extraordinary set of key critical factors precludes any need to dally with attempts to show Yates got his information from news reports. We've already shown Yates possessed knowledge of things that couldn't have come from any news reports that Farley ignores.

It's also extremely low to use FBI's dirty tactics in the matter of Yates family mental health history. Farley never answered how Yates could have no mention of this mental history on his Butcher Supply Company record prior to this event? The truth is Yates perfectly conforms to how a person with such a family history would progressively react to criminal FBI pressure tactics. To try to take the exact side of FBI in these criminal tactics and blame Yates for their results is criminal in itself. They were breaking Yates with intent and found an easy way to do it and easy excuse to account for it. Not seeing that is shameful in my opinion. Funny how Yates' commitment occurred right after his passing the polygraph.