Oswald And David Ferrie Seen Together By Dallas Cab Driver

[Duncan MacRae]

Oswald And David Ferrie Seen Together By Dallas Cab Driver

[Michael T. Griffith]

Oswald's repeated association with David Ferrie is one of the Rosetta Stones of the assassination. It is often overlooked that a former INS agent confirmed Oswald's association with Ferrie.

Orest Pena reported that on several occasions he saw Oswald speaking with FBI Cuban specialist Warren de Brueys, with David Smith at the Customs office, and with Wendell Roache at the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) office in New Orleans.

Pena was not always consistent in his accounts, but Roache confirmed Pena’s account about seeing Oswald in the New Orleans INS office when Roache was interviewed by the Church Committee. Roache said that he had “frequently” seen Oswald in the INS office and that Oswald even had an office there.

Roache stated in another Church Committee interview that during INS surveillance, Oswald was seen going into the offices of David Ferrie’s anti-Castro group in New Orleans, and that “Oswald was known to be one of the men in the group.”

I discuss this and other evidence of the Oswald-Ferrie connection at length in A Comforting Lie: The Myth That a Lone Gunman Killed President Kennedy.

[John Corbett]

Oswald's repeated association with David Ferrie is one of the Rosetta Stones of the assassination. It is often overlooked that a former INS agent confirmed Oswald's association with Ferrie.

Orest Pena reported that on several occasions he saw Oswald speaking with FBI Cuban specialist Warren de Brueys, with David Smith at the Customs office, and with Wendell Roache at the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) office in New Orleans.

Pena was not always consistent in his accounts, but Roache confirmed Pena’s account about seeing Oswald in the New Orleans INS office when Roache was interviewed by the Church Committee. Roache said that he had “frequently” seen Oswald in the INS office and that Oswald even had an office there.

Roache stated in another Church Committee interview that during INS surveillance, Oswald was seen going into the offices of David Ferrie’s anti-Castro group in New Orleans, and that “Oswald was known to be one of the men in the group.”

I discuss this and other evidence of the Oswald-Ferrie connection at length in A Comforting Lie: The Myth That a Lone Gunman Killed President Kennedy.

You seem to waffle back and forth between Oswald being a patsy and him being a participant in a conspiracy. I guess you're just hedging your bets. Unfortunately, you failed to cover the correct one.

[Michael T. Griffith]

You seem to waffle back and forth between Oswald being a patsy and him being a participant in a conspiracy. I guess you're just hedging your bets. Unfortunately, you failed to cover the correct one.

You seem to have a very narrow way of thinking. Why could not Oswald have been both a participant and a patsy?

History gives us a number of examples of men who were involved in conspiracies and who were then made patsies by those conspiracies. It is not uncommon for conspirators to set up one of their fellow plotters, often someone lower down in the chain, as the fall guy, the patsy--for example, the four men framed by Mafia hitman Joseph "The Animal" Barboza for the murder of Ed Deegan in 1965 (Justice Department documents later revealed that FBI agents allowed Barboza to frame the men in order to protect top FBI informants in the Mafia).

For that matter, the Rampart scandal involving the LAPD in the 1990s and early 2000s revealed that some LAPD officers had framed a number of people by planting evidence and committing perjury.

In the real world here on planet Earth, as opposed to the fantasy land embraced by lone-gunman theorists, conspiracies happen, and they sometimes include framing people as patsies/fall guys. That is why there are state and federal laws against conspiracy, and why hundreds of people are convicted of conspiracy each year. That is also why there are many examples of people who were framed as patsies but whose convictions were overturned because evidence of their framing emerged. 

Anyway, I notice you said nothing about the evidence of the prolonged, extensive Oswald-Ferrie association. What was an avowed Marxist doing spending so much time with a violent, Mafia-connected right-wing extremist like David Ferrie? 

[John Corbett]

You seem to have a very narrow way of thinking. Why could not Oswald have been both a participant and a patsy?

I suppose that depends on your definition of a patsy. I'm sure when Oswald used the term, he was claiming his innocence, not that he was the fall guy for a conspiracy he took part in. If Oswald was a participant, he was guilty of capital murder whether he was the shooter or not. It's all academic because Oswald was the shooter and there is no evidence he had any accomplices.

History gives us a number of examples of men who were involved in conspiracies and who were then made patsies by those conspiracies. It is not uncommon for conspirators to set up one of their fellow plotters, often someone lower down in the chain, as the fall guy, the patsy--for example, the four men framed by Mafia hitman Joseph "The Animal" Barboza for the murder of Ed Deegan in 1965 (Justice Department documents later revealed that FBI agents allowed Barboza to frame the men in order to protect top FBI informants in the Mafia).

For that matter, the Rampart scandal involving the LAPD in the 1990s and early 2000s revealed that some LAPD officers had framed a number of people by planting evidence and committing perjury.

In the real world here on planet Earth, as opposed to the fantasy land embraced by lone-gunman theorists, conspiracies happen, and they sometimes include framing people as patsies/fall guys. That is why there are state and federal laws against conspiracy, and why hundreds of people are convicted of conspiracy each year. That is also why there are many examples of people who were framed as patsies but whose convictions were overturned because evidence of their framing emerged. 

Anyway, I notice you said nothing about the evidence of the prolonged, extensive Oswald-Ferrie association. What was an avowed Marxist doing spending so much time with a violent, Mafia-connected right-wing extremist like David Ferrie?

It seems Oswald and Ferrie might have crossed paths in the Civilian Air Patrol when Oswald was in his teens. The evidence they had a long-term association is thin as gruel. That's one of the reasons the jury acquitted Clay Shaw in about 45 minutes.

[Fred Litwin]

The truth about the cab driver