Everything you never wanted to know about the Klein's Postal Money Order

[Tim Nickerson]

It's more in the vein of dispelling factoids. The File Locator Number should conclusively establish, one would think, that the PMO was processed through the Federal Reserve System without bank stamps. Period, end of discussion. When CTers then shift to the "no, it was fabricated (or planted)" argument, however, you are back to having to deal with bank stamps. Either the conspirators stupidly forgot to include them on the PMO they fabricated or planted, or bank stamps simply weren't necessary on PMOs that were processed through the Federal Reserve System (as they weren't). When CTers shift to "it should have been at the auditing center in Kansas City," you are forced to explain the distinction between the auditing center and the records retention center and why the PMO was at the records center. I know I had no rock-solid understanding of these issues at the time of the Ed Forum debate, and I guarantee you no one else did either. It takes a complete understanding of the process, from 1864 to the mid-1880s to 1913 to 1942 to 1951 to 1955 to 1963, to really understand PMOs and why the CT arguments are bogus.

Before someone leaps on the fact that the article about the File Locator Number is dated 1966, it is discussing a system that was implemented in 1957.

Good Lord, I see that my original posts on this issue at the Ed Forum date back to 2015. Unbelievable.

Ok. I haven't visited the Ed Forum much since 2016. I've never seen any of the "no, it was fabricated (or planted)" argument over there. Your understanding of the whole issue is beyond my pay grade, no doubt.

[David Von Pein]

I'm glad Tim posted the page from the 1966 article on the File Locator Number. When I did my original research, the article popped right up as a PDF. Now, as I recall, it's not available at all, even at the link.

Yes, that's right. The original link to the 1966 PDF now does not include the full PDF. It disappeared several years ago. But, fortunately, that PDF file is still fully available through that great invention known as the Wayback Machine....

https://web.archive.org/web/20160121141437/https://www.computer.org/csdl/proceedings/afips/1966/5068/00/50680479.pdf

[David Von Pein]

Here are a few excerpts that I've archived from the various three-year-long online "Money Order" discussions.....

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LANCE PAYETTE SAID:

I don't purport to be any postal money order expert; I could be wrong about what I am seeing. Frankly, I'm pretty surprised at what I have managed to turn up with some minimal Internet sleuthing while I sit home with the flu, and even more surprised that it would be causing any controversy here.

Perhaps the question should be, "Why did Gil Jesus, David Josephs, John Armstrong, Martha Moyer and Ray Gallagher not find in literally years of research, going back to the nineties, what Barely Interested Lance has found in a day and a half?"

Truly, if the money order is bogus, I'll be delighted -- this would be way more interesting than the alternative. If it isn't bogus -- well, surely, no CT stands or falls with the money order. I'm just trying to follow the evidence where it leads.

Just in my posts, I have publicly waffled from thinking (1) the money order didn't require bank endorsements, to (2) the money order did require bank endorsements, to (3) the money order appears to show evidence of final processing by the Treasury Department. This is [as Jim DiEugenio suggested in an earlier comment] a "rush to find closure," in your view?

(The File Locator Number, if that's what it is, does strike me as "closure," I'll have to admit. It seems to me to be a deal-killer, simply because of what a File Locator Number is. If I learn beyond question that your car was sitting in your garage at the time of the accident, all of my other "evidence" it was involved in the accident pretty much falls by the wayside. If this is a File Locator Number and someone wants to persist with a new and improved theory as to why the FLN is just part of the conspiracy, be my guest.)

Where is John Armstrong? I thought he was going to be educating us in short order.


JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:

What struck me was that once you assumed you knew what the File Locator number was and what it represented, you then said, that was it. Either it's closed or everyone is nuts. Period. As if nothing else mattered. Without interviewing any bank presidents or supervisors etc. Which John [Armstrong] just did.

And that interview will have a very much divergent view than yours. I think a 35-year bank president would be a pretty good court witness. But that does not mean anything to you, it seems. And you did not think it important to call one, did you?


JAMES DiEUGENIO ALSO SAID:

So we have this rifle, which as you must know is the wrong rifle -- in both classification and in length and weight. It was not the rifle the WC says Oswald ordered.


DAVID VON PEIN SAID:

Jim's above comment about the "wrong rifle" is just outright nonsense. And I think, deep down, Jim knows it's pure nonsense.

Quoting from a discussion I had with DiEugenio in April of this year [2015] at Amazon.com:

"As for the assassination rifle being the "wrong rifle", as Jimmy likes to constantly say, DiEugenio knows perfectly well what the reasonable answer to that "36-inch vs. 40-inch" discrepancy is. I've pointed it out to him on several occasions in the past. But since he likes the idea of Oswald having never touched Carcano Rifle #C2766, Jim will forever ignore the logical answer to the "wrong rifle" topic.

But, of course, that's why we have had professional investigators and real detectives looking into these matters over the years, instead of relying on clowns like Jim DiEugenio to try and solve a Presidential assassination. If James had been in charge, Oswald would probably have posthumously been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize instead of being officially labelled what he was---a double murderer.

Re: the rifle....

"Regardless of exactly what it said in the American Rifleman magazine from which Lee Oswald ordered his rifle via mail-order (i.e., "36 inches" vs. "40 inches"; and "Carbine" vs. anything else), Klein's shipped a rifle with serial number C2766 to "A. Hidell" on March 20, 1963. The internal paperwork generated AT THE TIME in March of '63 (see Waldman Exhibit No. 7) confirms that Oswald/"Hidell" was shipped an Italian 6.5mm rifle with that exact serial number on it ("C2766")." -- DVP; September 21, 2008"


JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:

This is a fact. Pure and simple: The rifle that the WC says Oswald ordered is not the rifle in evidence. It's the wrong rifle. Period. He [DVP] can fulminate and stomp his feet and fall on the floor about it and throw his usual John Barrymore tantrums a la Bugliosi. He's been doing it for years, decades actually.

None of that will erase this fact. It's the wrong rifle by length, weight and classification.

And there is no credible evidence Oswald ever picked it up. And in fact, he could not have picked it up by postal regs. So the WC lied about this. And they used Harry Holmes to do so. For a very succinct treatment of this, see Stewart Galanor's book called, appropriately enough, Cover Up. He deals with it in about four pages, and half of them are primary documents he got from writing the Postmaster General.

Harry Holmes' testimony contradicted that evidence. Either that or Galanor forged the letter he wrote and the documents he was sent. (Incredible the way these anti conspiracy guys end up embracing these fantastic solutions to their evidentiary problems.)

Now, my general point is this: how can an attorney [Lance Payette] isolate one tiny part of this transaction and say it's valid, based on that one point. When, in fact, everything about it--from A to Z--is dubious. And the guy who started the whole MO [Money Order] mess is Holmes! Who he ignores.

By doing so, is he not then guilty of doing the thing he says is true about the people he criticizes?


DAVID VON PEIN SAID:

Jim,

It's a thing called: Being able to properly and reasonably evaluate and assess the evidence in the JFK murder case without resorting to calling everybody under the sun a liar or a cover-up agent or a conspirator.

And as I have pointed out so many times in the past, that is something that James DiEugenio has never been able to do. And I think that becomes blatantly obvious when we look at the sum total of the many, many things that Jim is absolutely positive fall into the general category of "everything about it--from A to Z--is dubious" --- and I'm not talking about JUST the rifle evidence, but virtually EVERY SINGLE THING that points in the direction of Lee Harvey Oswald as the murderer of President Kennedy AND J.D. Tippit.

DiEugenio thinks ALL of the evidence pointing to Oswald is "dubious". All of it. It's ridiculous.

Just last week, I asked Jim:

"I'll be happy to rewrite that 20th item [on this list], Jim, if you can tell me JUST ONE single piece of evidence that leads to Oswald that you think was NOT faked, tainted, or manufactured. Is there one such piece? I don't think there is." -- DVP; November 12, 2015

I never received an answer.

The silence was (and is) deafening.

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Tons More:
http://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2015/10/jfk-assassination-arguments-part-1058.html

[Michael T. Griffith]

I hate to break up this thread's exercise in mutual admiration and automatic agreement, but here's part of the rest of the story:

-- Oswald was at work when the money order was purchased.

-- The FBI was never able to verify that Oswald picked up the rifle from the post office. No postal worker recalled giving Oswald the package. Plus, there was no evidence that an "A. Hidell" was on the list of persons authorized to pick up mail from that post office box.

-- When the post office box form was entered into evidence, it was conveniently missing the part of the form that listed authorized recipients, even though postal regulations required that this portion of the form be retained for two years. However, the FBI, in a buried memo, admitted it knew that the form did not list an "A. Hidell" as an authorized recipient.

-- The alleged murder rifle was not the rifle that was ordered from Klein's. The 36-inch, 5.5 pound Mannlicher-Carcano carbine allegedly ordered by Oswald does not match the murder weapon entered into evidence by the Dallas police, which was a 40.2 inch, 7.5 pound Mannlicher-Carcano rifle.

-- The First National Bank of Chicago's unstamped deposit slip for the $13,827.98 deposit, which allegedly included the money order for the rifle, shows a deposit date of February 15, 1963--one month before the postal money order was purchased in Dallas.

When the Secret Service asked Klein's VP William Waldman about the $13,827.98 deposit, Waldman admitted that the bank had listed the deposit date as 2/15/63, but Waldman claimed the bank must have made a mistake on the deposit date, although Waldman added that he had no way of proving it was the wrong date. Really? No way of proving when a $13K deposit was made?! If the $13K deposit had been made on 3/15/63, instead of the date shown on the deposit slip (2/15/63), then Waldman merely needed to produce the Klein's bank statement for the month of March 1963. But he did not.

-- The $21.45 money order that Oswald allegedly mailed from Dallas to buy the rifle supposedly arrived at Klein's Sporting Goods on March 13, less than 24 hours after it was mailed, an amazing feat for the Post Office in 1963. We are also asked to believe that the money order was then deposited in the First National Bank on March 13, the same day it arrived at Klein's, a remarkably rapid processing of a money order, never mind that the deposit slip said the money was deposited on February 15.

Some sources for further reading:

https://harveyandlee.net/Mail_Order_Rifle/Mail_Order_Rifle.html

https://share.google/AeDdzmbMZXfnUAdUh

https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/a-presumption-of-innocence-lee-harvey-oswald-part-1

[Lance Payette]

Just for fun, I reviewed some of the old Ed Forum threads on these issues. Good God, what a mishmash of uninformed blather and irrelevant tangents. In my first contribution, I – who had no idea what I was talking about – contributed a court case referring to “bank stamps.” I – who had no idea what I was talking about – was warmly welcomed by Sandy!

The case will illustrate what I said on my first post on this thread. It’s United States v. Cambridge Trust Co., 300 F.2d 76 (1st Cir. 1962). Stay with me here.

A guy named Porter purchased 699 PMOs payable to himself. He then cleverly raised the dollar amounts on all of them. A bank called Cambridge Trust Company paid the PMOs and was eventually reimbursed by the Treasury Department. The case is about the Treasury Department wanting its money back from Cambridge Trust.

Here is what I did not grasp at the time: Cambridge Trust was “a Massachusetts state-chartered trust company.” It was not a member of the Federal Reserve System.

As described in my first post here, a state-chartered bank like Cambridge Trust got its PMOs into the Federal Reserve System through its designated clearinghouse bank, here the First National Bank of Boston. First National did not pay Cambridge Trust but simply transmitted the PMOs to the regional Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. There was no need for First National to bank stamp (endorse) the PMOs because it was simply performing a middleman function.

Precisely as described in my first post here, Cambridge Trust did indeed bank stamp the PMOs. That stamp read: “Pay to the Order of Any Bank, Banker or Trust Co. Prior Endorsements Guaranteed Cambridge Trust Company.”

Because I was clueless at the time, I failed to realize the significance of Cambridge Trust being a state-chartered bank and First National being its clearinghouse bank. What occurred was precisely what I described in my first post here.

The Klein’s PMO issue is hereby declared as dead as a vampire with a stake through his heart. I will hear or say no more about it. All honors previously bestowed on the late Sandy, RIP, in connection with this matter are hereby revoked. If the Harvey & Lee loons persist with this nonsense, they are lying frauds.

Which reminds me: Here is the very first factoid I ever busted!

On the recommendation of Walt Brown, I actually bought Harvey & Lee. $80 at the time. It came to me directly from Armstrong in Hawaii. A footnote in the PMO discussion referred to a statement by Robert Wilmouth, Vice President of the First National Bank of Chicago, to the effect that the Klein’s PMO should have bank stamps on the back.

Diligent me checked the footnote. Wilmouth said absolutely, positively NOTHING OF THE KIND. And neither did anyone else. You can read Wilmouth’s statement here: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10408#relPageId=199.
This was so blatant that the H&L site was quietly corrected. But all the other bank stamp nonsense remains.

Wilmouth did say that the Klein’s PMO would have gone from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago to “a central processing center in Kansas City, Missouri.” Neither Little Old Me nor anyone else in the silly debate understood that this was the Postal Service’s auditing center, where PMOs did indeed go before being placed into storage at the federal records center in Alexandria. Lester Gohr of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago clarified that there were actually two auditing centers, Kansas City and Washington, DC: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10408#relPageId=200.

And that’s all I’m going to say about that. Factoid busting is hard, detailed work. When dealing with CTers, you can’t just say “The File Locator Number settles it.” You have to approach the matter as though you were trying to kill a vampire, because you pretty much are.

[John Mytton]

I hate to break up this thread's exercise in mutual admiration and automatic agreement, but here's part of the rest of the story:

-- Oswald was at work when the money order was purchased.

-- The FBI was never able to verify that Oswald picked up the rifle from the post office. No postal worker recalled giving Oswald the package. Plus, there was no evidence that an "A. Hidell" was on the list of persons authorized to pick up mail from that post office box.

-- When the post office box form was entered into evidence, it was conveniently missing the part of the form that listed authorized recipients, even though postal regulations required that this portion of the form be retained for two years. However, the FBI, in a buried memo, admitted it knew that the form did not list an "A. Hidell" as an authorized recipient.

-- The alleged murder rifle was not the rifle that was ordered from Klein's. The 36-inch, 5.5 pound Mannlicher-Carcano carbine allegedly ordered by Oswald does not match the murder weapon entered into evidence by the Dallas police, which was a 40.2 inch, 7.5 pound Mannlicher-Carcano rifle.

-- The First National Bank of Chicago's unstamped deposit slip for the $13,827.98 deposit, which allegedly included the money order for the rifle, shows a deposit date of February 15, 1963--one month before the postal money order was purchased in Dallas.

When the Secret Service asked Klein's VP William Waldman about the $13,827.98 deposit, Waldman admitted that the bank had listed the deposit date as 2/15/63, but Waldman claimed the bank must have made a mistake on the deposit date, although Waldman added that he had no way of proving it was the wrong date. Really? No way of proving when a $13K deposit was made?! If the $13K deposit had been made on 3/15/63, instead of the date shown on the deposit slip (2/15/63), then Waldman merely needed to produce the Klein's bank statement for the month of March 1963. But he did not.

-- The $21.45 money order that Oswald allegedly mailed from Dallas to buy the rifle supposedly arrived at Klein's Sporting Goods on March 13, less than 24 hours after it was mailed, an amazing feat for the Post Office in 1963. We are also asked to believe that the money order was then deposited in the First National Bank on March 13, the same day it arrived at Klein's, a remarkably rapid processing of a money order, never mind that the deposit slip said the money was deposited on February 15.

Some sources for further reading:

https://harveyandlee.net/Mail_Order_Rifle/Mail_Order_Rifle.html

https://share.google/AeDdzmbMZXfnUAdUh

https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/a-presumption-of-innocence-lee-harvey-oswald-part-1

Wow, how could you be not aware of the evidence surrounding Oswald's rifle purchase?

For a start, expecting a postal worker to recall a single event out of hundreds or even thousands of interactions from over a half a year ago is borderline insane!

According to Kleins American Rifleman magazine advertisements, Oswald received what he ordered.
Oswald ordered C20-T750 and Oswald received C20-T750. End of story.



Even though the Dallas section of the post office application was missing, Oswald's New Orleans application clearly identified A.J. Hidell as an accepted recipient. Besides, as Holmes said and from anyone who has received mail will know, a wrong name will rarely if ever be returned to sender. And if there was a problem, Oswald possessed Hidell photo I.D.

Mr. LIEBELER. Now supposing that Oswald had not in fact authorized A. J. Hidell to receive mail here in the Dallas box and that a package came addressed to the name of Hidell, which, in fact, one did at Post Office Box 2915, what procedure would be followed when that package came in?
Mr. HOLMES. They would put the notice in the box.
Mr. LIEBELER. Regardless of whose name was associated with the box?
Mr. HOLMES. That is the general practice. The theory being, I have a box. I have a brother come to visit me. My brother would have my same name---well, a cousin. You can get mail in there. They are not too strict. You don't have to file that third portion to get service for other people there. I imagine they might have questioned him a little bit when they handed it out to him, but I don't know. It depends on how good he is at answering questions, and everything would be all right.





And finally we know Oswald got his rifle because he was photographed with the exact rifle that Kleins sent. Cased Closed!!



JohnM

[Zeon Mason]

@John Mytton
Hey, John, to prove the rifle in the BYP is 40” long, all you have to do is overlay a graphic ruler measuring Oswald’s body that’s divided into 7 equal segments.

From top of Oswalds hair plus with shoes on = approx 70” tall (5’10”) so each segment of the 7 segment ruler will be 10”.

Then take 4 of those same exact length segments and overlay those on the rifle image and I’m sure that the rifle will be 4 segments in length which therefore is 40”.

Note: You may already have posted this graphic measurement in the past but I can’t remember what thread it was.