("Quid coniuratio est?")
RESOLVED: President Kennedy was killed as the result of a conspiracy.
[Continuation of my transcription of a radio debate which took place in the Fall of 1993 between Peter Dale Scott and Gerald Posner. Today, Mr. Scott and Mr. Posner exchange questions for the second time.]
MODERATOR: Mr. Scott, I have to caution you to try and use your time better. But, you have one minute to ask Mr. Posner a question.
PETER DALE SCOTT: Um... there was... When Oswald went into the Soviet embassy in Mexico City, a tape was made of the conversation. The CIA has lied and lied and lied and lied about that tape. They said it was destroyed -- 2 weeks later, it wasn't. Then they said it was destroyed right after the assassination. But Mr. Slossen(?) of the Warren Commission staff... And Mr. Posner believes in the Warren Commission; he'd better believe Mr. Slossen when he says he heard the tape in April of 1964. Members of [Winston] Scott's fam... and the chief of station have said that [Winston] Scott and his wife listened to the tape later. James Angleton came down to Mexico City in 1971 [and] took the tape away.
Now on that tape, the man identified himself as Lee Oswald. And yet, as you say, he was not Oswald. How do you explain this?
MODERATOR: You have 2 minutes.
GERALD POSNER: Ah. But there's, there's a key difference. Uh, Slossen says he hears a tape. And [Winston] Scott talks about it later. But nobody says -- and this is absolutely key -- there's not a transcript of it. The man identifies himself as Lee Oswald. Years later, people say that.
Here's what's important: The CIA... and I'm not here to defend the CIA. I must tell you. One of the things, one of the things that Mr. Scott does and others who have criticized the book do, they say, "Ah. Posner believes everything the CIA does. And since he supports the Warren Commission's conclusion, he must agree with that." Absolutely false. I take the CIA at issue for a whole host of things, including the fact that they distorted evidence and lied to the Warren Commission, and they were trying to kill Fidel Castro and they didn't disclose it. And I take them to task for all the bungling efforts that they do in Mexico City.
But. Very importantly (and you know this): They had a picture of a man in Mexico City that was the wrong person. They thought they had identified Lee Harvey Oswald. He was about 35 years old, 10 years older than Oswald, husky. He's much taller. It's not Oswald. It led to 20 years of speculation, almost, [that] there was an "imposter Oswald" in Mexico City. That issue has been dropped recently, now that the Soviets have come out and said, "Guess what? The Oswald we met with in our embassy is the same person who was, in fact, in Dallas and arrested in November of '63." What it says, the very real possibility that I raised in the book, which is that the CIA had not only identified the wrong person as Oswald (because they didn't have a picture of him), but they were also having surveillance recording the wrong Oswald, the very same person who was inside the embassy. And that remains a real possibility to this day.
But. I agree with you that one of the last great areas of real interest here -- when new information has to come out -- is all the shenanigans in Mexico City. And when I say "shenanigans," what I'm talking about is not a plot to kill the President -- that's key -- but the CIA's and the KGB's desperate efforts to cover up their own sources of information: their informants, the contacts inside the Mexican embassy, whether they had double- agents inside the Cuban embassy, how they obtained video surveillance at the time, and this overwhelming desire of the intelligence agencies to protect... That type of history is what exactly leads to the type of speculation you have in this case, that you have sort of looked at and then said, "I see a conspiracy of murder."
MODERATOR: Mr. Posner, you have one minute to ask a question.
POSNER: O.K. And in my minute I'm just gonna take 30 seconds, the first 30, to say, Mr. Scott, that he didn't make a conclusion on the other assassinations. But in his own book he says, on page 97, "Behind the deep politics of the Kennedy assassination lie those of the [Huey] Long assassination." And on page 307 he talks about the comparisons between Sirhan Sirhan and Lee Harvey Oswald. So for somebody who hasn't made up his mind, he has some very interesting statements in the book.
But Mr. Scott, what I really would wonder is (since I don't see it discussed in this book and I know you have discussed it before): Why do you feel, if Oswald shot at General Walker in April of '63, (a) you believe the evidence that he shot at Walker, and (b) why would he have shot at Walker? And the second part of the question is, Do you believe the evidence that Oswald shot a Dallas policeman, J.D. Tippit, after the assassination? And if so, why do you believe he killed Tippit?
MODERATOR: Mr. Scott, 2 minutes.
SCOTT: ...General Walker, who... Somebody shot at General Walker. Eyewitnesses said it was *2* people. And if it was 2 people, then Oswald -- if it was Oswald -- then Oswald was not a "loner."
Whoever shot at General Walker, from about 15 feet away, did not shoot to kill him. I think they shot to help make him more of a martyr than he already was. The bullet in question, I will remind you, it changed jacket. It may have been copper-jacketed in November, but the bullet was originally identified, then, as being steel-jacketed. And I do believe that the bullets were changed, because I think it is not hard at all to find other cases of the falsification of evidence in that and other matters.
Now the killing of Tippit: Um, again, I believe there's falsification. The bullet thing is difficult to go into, but I think they rather botched the planting of bullets at the scene. Um, you believe the eyewitnesses like Helen Markum(?) and Warren Reynolds. Let me just say, Warren Reynolds was asked if he could recognize Oswald. He said that he was unable to do so. And then somebody shot him through the head. And then the Warren Commission had the gall to ask him again. And he said, "Oh yes! I remember now. It was Lee Harvey Oswald."
Well if you're going to rely on witnesses that have been coerced in that way, I think you're prepared to grasp at almost any straw in really conceding that there was no case.
MODERATOR: You will now each have 6 minutes to close. Mr. Scott, you have 6 minutes.
(to be continued)
I encourage distribution of "Conspiracy Nation."