Those generations who were there in 1963 are grateful that people like you are continuing the pursuit and taking another look at events which may have been too shocking for the rest of us to ever fully comprehend. For example, Joes father had to clear visitors with Roy Truly, the building manager, even though they were top executives from the company headquarters in Chicago. Mr. WILCOTT - Not publicly. Mr. WILCOTT - Well, from May of 1957 to January of 1960 - Mr. WILCOTT - My current one that I had on my counter. Mr. WILCOTT - Not to my knowledge. Mr. WILCOTT - Yes. Mr. CORNWELL - What, if any, investigation did the Agency do with respect to that? Jack Cason, the TSBD president, was a stocky, robust man before the assassination. We will. He was still living on Tatum Avenue at the time of the assassination. I apologize. Mr. CORNWELL - Had you ever run into any similar cryptonym? Had the seemingly insignificant trail of bread crumbs I stumbled across had not been so he avidly guarded, I might never have given it a second thought. Mr. WILCOTT - Yes. This fear casting a shadow over the lives of former employees was also directed against journalists seeking to lift the veil of secrecy. As a CIA employee, Wilcott stated under oath that many people told him that Lee Harvey Oswald was an agent of the CIA after the assassination had occurred. Enclosing the back area is a high, chain-link fence with coils of barbed wire on top. Mr. WILCOTT - Yes. Mr. WILCOTT - It was right at my window, my disbursing cage window. [7] The Bergins house appeared to be under surveillance and their telephone line seemed to have been tapped. Mr. WILCOTT - That is correct, sir. Reminder warnings were given on an individual or a small group basis. [6] They held a big meeting during which they warned everyone not to discuss the assassination with outsiders. There was a problem loading your book clubs. Mr. WILCOTT - Along those lines they said things like, well, that Oswald couldn't have pulled the trigger, that only CIA could have set up such an elaborate project and there was nobody with the kind of knowledge or information that could have done this, and this was more in the speculative realm. Mr. GOLDSMITH - Do you remember which of these individuals if any, made the specific allegation or reference that Oswald was an agent? After completing the questionnaire, the two F.B.I. Its perhaps a moot point anyway, because based on what youve told me, you now know more than I do. He learned this after the fact through various sources within the Agency, who all recognized what had happened after the assassination and the association of Oswalds name with the crime. James Earl Ray fired one shot at Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Mr. SAWYER - What would they say? There was XXXXXXXXXXXX Branch, who had XXXXXXXXXXX cover. Mr. GOLDSMITH - I am sorry, I didn't hear. And their security that there is in the Government didn't strike me as the kind of security that would keep me from getting attacked in some way, if someone wanted to do it. Garner went on to say that at the same time, around 1969, William Shelley quit the book depository and began working for Scott Foresman. ", and things like that. Behind the building are five loading docks and an asphalt lot extensive enough to accommodate a number of trucks of any given size. (National Archives, RG 272) No other event of the last 75 . (Its address, I later learned, was 11310 Gemini Lane.) Mr. WILCOTT - Yes, I did. Mr. WILCOTT - I think the most significant thing that can be actually substantiated is the circumstances surrounding my employment with the community renewal program in Utica, and I was the finance analyst for the community renewal program in Utica. Mr. GOLDSMITH - Would your Counsel identify himself for the recorder? Mr. WILCOTT - None initially. Mr. WILCOTT - From the time I left I talked at various times, especially at parties and things like that, on social occasions, with people at headquarters and with people at my station, and we would converse about it and I used to say things like, "What do you think about Oswald being connected with the CIA? Mr. GOLDSMITH - Do you have a personal opinion as to how or for what purpose the CIA might have handled any projects that involved Lee Harvey Oswald? Mr. WILCOTT - Yes, you did. Apparently, security measures to keep people from talking continued even after they went into retirement or found other occupations. Larry Watanabi, XXXXXX Branch, Senior Case Officer; and XXXXXXXXXXX, deep commercial cover agent. How long were the XXXXXXXXX cash disbursement files or records retained? Mr. GOLDSMITH - Only of Case Officers. Mr. WILCOTT - In 1963, I wasn't think that much about it. Since the CIA has the capability of engineering car crashes to look like accidents, Harriss name should be added to the list of mysterious deaths, along with Warren Commission witness Lee Bowers, who died when his car ran off the road and ran into a freeway abutment. Mr. WILCOTT - Yes, sir. Also Present: Michael Goldsmith, Counsel, and Gary Cornwell, Counsel. According to Wilcott, Tokyo time of killing was approx. I can't remember what it was. Mine was a happenstance meeting and short, casual friendship with a man who appeared to have fallen through the cracks. Thank you for your kind words and interest. Mr. GOLDSMITH - So that they would be routinely destroyed at the time of auditing? James Wilcott worked out of the Tokyo CIA station at the time of the assassination. Mr. DODD - And it includes the information that Oswald was an agent? Mr. WILCOTT - They never revealed that to me, sir, as far as their relations with Oswald. Mr. WILCOTT - Yes, sir. [13] Henry Hurt, Reasonable Doubt (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1985), pp. You may have noticed that at the end of my letter to Alternative Views I carbon-copied to my will. It was intended as a jab at myself lest I get too full of myself rereading it 50 years from now. This was about, believe -- about October of 1975. There were more people than that that believed it, and six people with any degree of certainty that, you know, I felt from what they were saying that they either had some kind of substantial knowledge, or they had talked to somebody who had some knowledge. Mr. WILCOTT - Yes, sir; it was a cryptonym that I was familiar with, that it must have been at least two or three occasions that I had remembered it and it did ring a bell, yes. This was preparing and reconciling payrolls. Mr. GOLDSMITH - Mr. Wilcott, did I ask you to prepare a list of CIA Case Officers working at XXXXXXXXX Station in 1963? It was first broadcast in 1978 on a public access television channel in Austin, Texas. Mr. GOLDSMITH - And did you check any other records? Perhaps that is why I was so unprepared during that brief step into the looking glass.. Mr. GOLDSMITH - So, then, really, no purpose would have been served by checking those records? There was a person, Dave, who was a Deputy Chief. Mr. WILCOTT - I am sorry, sir; I lost the thread of your question. He said he went back inside and went into the basement for ten minutes, supposedly eating his lunch.[25]. These companies were part of a complex system involving: (a) the state legislature, which purchased textbooks through a process called adoption, (b) the publishers, who were responsible for maintaining sufficient reserves, (c) the book depositories, which received the books, stored them, and shipped them out as needed to schools around the state. Mr. CORNWELL - Perhaps I can rephrase the question and get more pointedly what I need without running into the problem that you see. Mr. PREYER - It was your conclusion from that talk that some of these people might have knowledge that he was a CIA agent rather than that they were speculating about it? Wilcott lost a good job after leaving the CIA after his employer was told he would soon be under incitement when he wasnt and never was. Instead, he might have been one of the temporary musicians. He said there were two musicians who had been with the band since the beginning and he would speak to them. * JFK Facts editorJefferson Morley will personally answer your JFK questions. All visits to the building must be strictly business-related. In the mid-1970s, the band employed a ten-piece orchestra to back them up. Did you recognize any part of it, the first two letters or the last portions of it, as referring to any geographic area or any type of activity or anything like that? Apart from the one officer who said to you that you had paid monies with respect to Oswald's cryptonym, what were the other six or seven persons' purported connection with Oswald and the Agency's relation to him. Mr. GOLDSMITH - Well, in other words, if you got the information three months after the assassination, Oswald had already been dead for three months, is that right? Mr. WILCOTT - The specific incident was soon after the Kennedy assassination, where an agent, a Case Officer -- I am sure it was a Case Officer -- came up to my window to draw money, and he specifically said in the conversation that ensued, he specifically said, "Well, Jim, the money that I drew the last couple of weeks ago or so was money," either for the Oswald project or for Oswald. Mr. GOLDSMITH - Who was George Breen? Mr. WILCOTT - Generally so, I would say, at that time. There is an interesting paradox about this issue. Mr. GOLDSMITH - I understand. Why would anyone share the information that Oswald was an agent with you, Mr. Wilcott? Mr. GOLDSMITH - You testified that your records were only kept for thirty days, is that correct? She said that no one by the name of Glaze was currently working for the newspaper, nor was that name among the files of past employees. This book provides the first useful, in-depth analysis of the 120 phone calls by LBJ in the week following the assassination regarding such items as the Civil Rights Act, demands made by the military and similar political power plays. He closed his 1989 letter with a lurid metaphor: I will help any wayI just want to be forewarned. Mr. WILCOTT - No, sir; I think I had good performance reviews right up to the time that I left. Mr. WILCOTT - George Breen was a person in Registry, who was my closest friend while I was in XXXXXXXXXXXXXX. From April of 1965 to April of 1966, I was at Miami Station in finance, and I was handling the staff payroll. "I was standing on the triple underpass at the time and was wounded by a fragment that bounced off the pavement," Tague, now 77, told ABC News. The third calm man was probably Wesley Fraizer, who stuck close to Shelley and Lovelady. Mr. Wilcott, maybe we can expedite this somewhat by asking you this: Do you have any first-hand knowledge or information as to a link between the failed Bay of Pigs operation and the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy? At the time he visited the place, Scott Foresman was gone, and a carpet company was occupying the building. Mr. PREYER - Thank you for being here today, and I will call the subcommittee to order at this time. Mr. WILCOTT - Yes. Mr. WILCOTT - Yes. Mr. GOLDSMITH - So, is your testimony then that even though. Mr. GOLDSMITH - I am not sure that that is responsive. Mr. WILCOTT - They called me up to chief of security, the agent security, and they interviewed me on the association that I had had with the group, and then they gave me a polygraph -- in fact, two polygraphs -- concerning my association with the group of people that I met with the group. After failing to get anywhere, I let the matter sit for six years. Mr. WILCOTT - Especially after Kennedy's assassination, there was a great deal of very, very serious discontent with CIA, and the morale at the station had dropped considerably, and we heard some very, very bitter denunciations of CIA and the projects that they were undertaking. Mae Brussell showed copies of this document to the editors of Globe. Mr. CORNWELL - Has any representative of the Agency or anyone who you believed might be a representative of the Agency ever come to you and discussed these matters? At the end of the hallway to his right was another door. (The witness conferred with his Counsel.). The owner of the establishment, rightwing oil man, D. H. Byrd would have had little problem approving that kind of clearance. Sorry, there was a problem loading this page. Henry Hurt, author of Reasonable Doubt, discovered such boxes while investigating the claims of an alleged conspirator. Mr. WILCOTT - Well, they were such incidents as the FBI agent that was working with a group -- and this was an established fact that this person was an FBI agent and that he wa working with the group that I was working with an antiwar group and, to my mind, there is a very great likelihood that this person was there to neutralize me, as the CIA term went. Butler said that the 411 Elm Street building was vacant for at least a year after his company moved out. Why this information would.come out to a CIA station XXXXXXX rather than some other part of the world is, I assume, because Oswald was trained in Japan, according to your belief. It was more of a casual kind of thing, to my way of thinking. Mr. WILCOTT - Very much. Mr. WILCOTT - Yes. Mr. GOLDSMITH - Just give us their names. Mr. CORNWELL - What type of people were they? every CIA Case Officer who worked XXXXXXXXXX in 1963? Mr. DODD - Am I to presume that you told your wife of the conversation you had with this case officer at the time it occurred? [2] As we shall see, there is evidence that Oswald worked with another CIA agent in Dallas. ", and they might look it over and retype the accounting for funds for their project and, you know, make changes that they might think were in their interest to do. Mr. WILCOTT - No, sir. (Whereupon, at 12:55 p.m. the subcommittee recessed. In 1974, I met a person who says she was at that time working for Bill Schelly, who says he was Lee Harvey Oswalds superior at the time of the assassination. Mr. WILCOTT - -- to the Miami Station. (sic) Mr. WILCOTT - Well, I believed it to be a little more than speculation, that the source at least of this kind of talk was, I believe, to be something more serious than speculation. [23], The man using the pay phone was Shelley, for in an affidavit made out that same afternoon, he said, "I went back into the building [from outside where he viewed the shooting of the president] and went inside and called my wife and told her what happened. Two weeks later, he wrote back: Received your letter of July 7, 1999. Mr. WILCOTT - Not specifically, only generally. Unable to add item to List. Mr. WILCOTT - In 1968. Mr. CORNWELL - It was not normally part of your duties or the scope of the knowledge that you routinely acquired on your job, as I understand it, for you to know what the cryptonyms meant; is that correct? Sawyer - What would they say on Tatum Avenue at the time he visited the place, Scott was. 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