Week in Review: On the Night Watch, 11/23/1963
We traverse a mystery involving a former president. And then walk through some LBJ history in Washington, D.C.
A witness has come forward to clarify a longstanding JFK assassination-related controversy emanating from one sentence in one document dated Nov. 29, 1963. The FBI memorandum, which concerned an analysis of the post-assassination situation within the pro- and anti-Castro Cuban communities in Miami, included this statement:
The substance of the foregoing information was orally furnished to Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency and Captain William Edwards of the Defense Intelligence Agency on November 23, 1963, by Mr. W. T. Forsyth of this Bureau.
George Bush? The future 11th CIA director and 41st president of the United States? Larry Hancock and Chad Nagle reported on the history of conspiracy theories that developed after researcher and journalist Joseph McBride discovered the memo in 1988 and published an article about it in The Nation on July 16 that year. A New York Times report a couple of days later also featured the story.
The Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) made its own inquiries with the CIA. Hancock and Nagle showed that: “(t)he ARRB documented the responses, confirming a basic case of misidentification. On Nov. 23, 1963, former CIA employee George William Bush had indeed worked as a CIA watch officer on shift.” In other words, they said it wasn’t the future president.
Case closed? Not for intrepid JFK assassination researchers, who continued to have questions about the story.
A witness has stepped forward. The other individual the FBI memo described as orally informed about the Cuban community — William Edwards of the DIA — shared his experience of the night of Nov. 23, 1963 with a written statement provided to the Mary Ferrell Foundation.
Read Edwards’ statement at the link below, along with in-depth historical context from JFK Facts.
In My Backyard, Take One
So near yet so far. I can take a walk from my apartment, just 2.5 miles along one street, to this home-with-a-title: The Elms, which was also code-named “Valley” when Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson lived there in the early 1960s. My route passes the fortified Israeli Embassy (not shown on the Metro map), many Secret Service vehicles, McDonald’s, churches, neighborhood parks, and the homes of the Spring Valley neighborhood before reaching an unmarked gate. I’ve now crossed several income brackets, and there are no sidewalks, so I am walking in the street.
Peter Voskamp reported about this quiet spot, now the home of the Algerian ambassador to the United States.
The code name, tragically, was invoked in the post-assassination radio traffic between Air Force One and the White House as the plane was returning to Washington carrying both the newly sworn-in 36th president and the body of the 35th.
For fans of code names, here’s a declassified document that captures some:
Shout-out of the Week
A memoir from a then-teenaged mailroom staffer prompted an “exclusive” in People magazine, “RFK’s Former Staffer Details the Night They Almost Spent Together in New Memoir,” that leads you on to discover — no romance.
Donna Chaffee on Facebook:
God bless all of you at JFK Facts. May truth prevail, in fine. And may God's justice and wrath prevail against the evildoers who are responsible for the ruination of humankind and indeed of our magnificent, unique, gorgeous, planet Earth.