As we’ve seen so far, the Warren Commission (WC) raised a question regarding how the staff from the German newspaper Deutsche Nationalzeitung (DNZ) learned on the morning after the JFK Assassination, that Lee Harvey Oswald (LHO) had been Walker’s April 10, 1963 shooter.
It was startling because the FBI itself did not learn that fact until December 6, 1963, when Marina Oswald volunteered this information to the FBI and the US Secret Service. The FBI quickly contacted the German BFV (equivalent of our FBI) who had already seized the author of the article – Helmut Münch – to demand the explanation. Münch confessed to the BFV that our Citizen Walker himself was the source of that story.
The FBI told this to the WC, who in July 1964 directly asked Walker about this. Under oath, Walker denied the account of Helmut Münch and proposed that the DNZ writers must have “guessed right.” The WC pathetically accepted this testimony and that was that. (Later, Walker would repeatedly insist that the FBI actually knew that LHO was Walker’s April shooter back in April, but he dared not even hint this to the WC.)
My research into Walker’s personal papers stored at the Briscoe Center for American History (UT Austin campus) showed that Walker repeated the DNZ theme in multiple versions for the rest of his life. Let’s review highlights from ten of those writings as they repeat the DNZ theme all the way to 1991.
According to Walker, LHO by no means acted alone in the Walker shooting. The identities of the others involved were crucial to Walker because he believed the other shooters were still at large. Walker, through his agent, Mr. Moore (or Morse or Morris) and her agent, John Martin begged Marina Oswald for more information. But Marina only knew what LHO had told her, and she already gave all that information to the FBI and Secret Service. She knew nothing else.
“Please send me the all the records you have on this,” pleaded Walker to the FBI in the 1960s, to Robert Blakey in the 1970s, to Senator Frank Church in 1975, and to Janet Reno in the 1980s. He was never satisfied with what he received, since it was always the same reply.
Walker evidently nursed a paranoid fantasy that RFK was behind the April 10, 1963 shooting – as an extension of RFK and JFK’s imprisonment of Walker at the Springfield insane asylum on October 1, 1962. RFK did this because of Walker's role in the fatal Ole Miss University racial riots.
Although Walker’s lawyers got him out of Springfield in three days, and although in late January 1963 Walker was acquitted of all charges in the Ole Miss riots, everything went south on April 10, 1963. That was when Walker barely survived an assassination attempt at his Dallas home. Walker feared that RFK had hired someone to assassinate him. We saw this opinion in print in the DNZ article, printed on the weekend after the JFK Assassination.
This fantasy became Walker’s lifelong obsession as we will see from his personal papers. I present my own opinions here with material evidence. Let’s review this theme through ten of Walker’s private papers in chronological order:
Oswald A Known Criminal (1967)
U.S. Senate and Its Senator Kennedy (1968)
Weekly Message (1977)
Letter to Professor Robert Blakey (1978)
Letter to A.G. Griffin Bell (1979)
Chief Curry’s Boo-Boo (1979)
Walker-Kennedy (1981)
The Trojan Horse – USA (1983)
Miscellaneous Writings (1989)
JFK Didn’t Know He Knew His Assassin (1991)
1. OSWALD A KNOWN CRIMINAL
On April 4, 1967 Walker typed an article entitled: OSWALD – A KNOWN CRIMINAL. Its ending paragraph repeats the DNZ story. Speaking of himself in the third person, Walker typed:
In fact, at 4011 Turtle Creek Blvd, Walker says that witnesses in Dallas are ample and adequate to establish that Oswald was picked up by the law enforcement agency between 9 PM and 12 midnight, April 10, 1963, after the incident. He was released. (Walker, 1967)
In this version of the story, Walker omitted RFK, yet the two key elements of Walker’s lifelong obsession remain: “LHO was arrested” and “LHO was released” on the night of April 10, 1963. As we saw in his 1975 letter to Senator Frank Church, Walker cited reliable (but unnamed) witnesses to confirm this.
(If you don't remember this letter, here's a URL so that you can read it directly: http://www.pet880.com/images/19750623_EAW_to_Frank_Church.pdf )
2. THE US SENATE AND ITS SENATOR KENNEDY
On June 12, 1968, the week after RFK was assassinated, Walker typed, US SENATE AND ITS SENATOR KENNEDY as a personal response to the RFK Assassination. His article begins: “I am neither shocked nor surprised.” He does not explain why. Walker next complains about JFK’s “employment of 23,000 troops at Oxford.” This was in Mississippi in late 1962, during the Ole Miss University racial riots where Walker led the rioters by using TV and radio (and on the ground as the AP reported). Was there some connection? He ends with a new echo of the DNZ story. Writing about himself in the third person he claims:
If authority, in the hands of the Attorney General and the Justice Department, had not seen fit to free Oswald and his associates in the attempted assassination of Edwin A. Walker – there is no reason to doubt that President John F. Kennedy and Senator Robert F. Kennedy would be alive today. There are bullet holes in a room of this house, my private residence, that testify to this fact. (Walker, 1968)
As in the DNZ article, we see RFK named as the person who allegedly ordered the release of LHO from police custody on April 10, 1963. RFK was the head of the US Justice Department at the time. This writing echoes the key claim of the DNZ article, that JFK would still be alive if LHO had been legally imprisoned. Now, however, on the week after the RFK Assassination Walker added a new element – that RFK would also be alive if not for LHO’s alleged release!
Yet LHO had been dead for five years; so how could there be any link between the RFK Assassination and LHO? We might surmise, given the context of Walker’s complaints against the Kennedy brothers, and that he linked his own shooting with both Kennedy assassinations, that either the Communists killed both Kennedys, or Walker was taking credit for both assassinations.
3. WEEKLY MESSAGE
On July 24, 1977, Walker typed a new WEEKLY MESSAGE for the Friends of Walker. It read:
For seven months, since April 10, 1963, I had waited to hear some word from some city or county law enforcement agency. There was no word. I knew that Federal agents knew who had fired a bullet through the window at me for political reasons. (Walker, 1977)
Here is a dim trace of the DNZ story – that US Federal agents knew very well who shot at Walker on April 10, 1963. Those US Federal agents worked for JFK and RFK, so they either refused to arrest LHO the shooter, or they released him instantly (what to speak of any other alleged shooters).
4. LETTER TO PROFESSOR ROBERT BLAKEY
On September 3, 1978 Walker wrote a formal letter to Robert Blakey, then presiding over the HSCA. Walker wrote:
Dear Professor Blakey:
I have seen no indication whether your Select Committee will or will not cover and include findings and conclusions in its final report, on the April crime of Oswald in Dallas as established and reported by the Warren Commission… I have a copy of the letter from the Dallas Police in reply to the FBI Wash, D.C. request of December 7, 1963, for information on the Dallas April Crime at 4011 Turtle Creek Blvd. The reply is incredible and non-creditable.
…
Sincerely,
Edwin A. Walker
Here in 1978 Walker still demands more information about his April shooting because he is dissatisfied with the Warren Report and Dallas Police conclusion that LHO and LHO alone was the sole shooter. Walker still refused to accept it.
5. LETTER TO ATTORNEY GENERAL GRIFFIN BELL
On February 12, 1979 Walker sent a telegram and the following letter to US Attorney General Griffin Bell, with a copy to the HSCA, complaining that Robert Blakey had shown the TV cameras an unfired bullet, and had called this bullet the “Walker bullet.” Walker was outraged as we can see below:
February 12, 1979
Attorney General
Department of Justice
Washington DC 20535
Reference: the attached telegram; copies of FBI records pertaining to Dallas City Police, Walker, and a bullet.
The Dallas City Police Department will verify that the bullet fired at Walker, 9 pm, April 10, 1963, passed through the center wood cross strip of the outer screen, through the wood frames of both panes of the window – upper and lower, to include the copper weather strip between and through an inside masonry wall reinforced with solid tin and metal lathing, vintage 1926, to fall spent below the exit hole in the mortar blown from the wall.
The bullet used and pictured on the TV, by the US Senate G. Robert Blakey Committee on Assassinations is a ridiculous substitute for a bullet completely mutilated by such obstruction and bearing no resemblance to any unfired bullet in shape or form.
I saw the hunk of lead, picked up by a policeman in my house, and I took it from him, and I inspected it carefully. There is no mistake. There has been a substitution for the bullet fired by Oswald and taken out of my house.
It is requested that you withdraw the substituted bullet from all records and files pertaining to the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the attempted assassination of Walker, and that you assure the security of the withdrawn bullet for future comparisons. I desire to be informed of your actions.
... Sincerely,
Edwin A. Walker
Again, Walker collated the JFK Assassination and the attempt on his own life in the same sentence. All that actually happened here was that Robert Blakey, in a televised interview speaking of LHO’s shooting at Walker, lacked the actual fragment on file at NARA, so he used any old bullet for illustration purposes. Citizen Walker went ballistic and called his lawyers and his Congressman and wrote to US Attorney General Griffin Bell. Walker evidently saw this as an opportunity to re-open the so-called Walker case.
6. CHIEF CURRY’S BOO-BOO
On December 12, 1969, Citizen Walker typed an article entitled, CHIEF CURRY’S BOO-BOO. Walker here tells his friends that Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry had recently sent envoy Bruce Angers to offer Walker lots of money to endorse Curry’s book on the JFK Assassination, namely, Retired Dallas Police Chief, Jesse Curry, Reveals His Personal JFK Assassination File (1969). In his article Walker says that he spurned that offer which he saw as a bribe for his silence. He kicked Angers out of his house, and he included this long sentence in the article:
The significance of Marina’s December role – her story of the April Crime – served the purposes of the “Open Case,” the Warren Report, the Curry book and all official agencies regarding the November Assassination, which was a situation that could not be ignored in its exposure of a Government that had been compromised by her and her husband, Lee, with their “Loner” connections and their protection by two Chiefs of State. (Walker, 1969)
Let’s unpack the elements of this tight sentence:
1. The “Open Case” here is the attempted murder of Walker at his Dallas home on April 10, 1963. Though Dallas Police regarded the case as “closed,” Walker insisted that it remained an “Open Case.”
2. Jesse Curry’s book would double-down on the claim that the Walker case was “closed.”
3. Walker blamed three entities: “the Warren Report, the Curry book, and all official agencies regarding the JFK Assassination.” They all considered his case “closed” only because they all played some role in the Red plot against Walker (even if only as cowards).
4. Walker claims that these three entities invented Marina Oswald’s “December …story of the April Crime.” Her sworn WC testimony that LHO confessed his own account of the Walker shooting to her after he came home at midnight – all of that was a WC fiction designed to hide the truth.
5. For Walker, the truth was a Red plot by Washington DC. This plot “had been compromised” by Marina Oswald and her husband LHO when the Red plot began to show.
6. Walker’s accusation implies that Marina Oswald, LHO, and Washington DC were Red spies for the Kremlin. They all struggled to conceal the Kremlin’s role in the JFK assassination, as Walker claimed relentlessly.
7. Now, Walker claimed, DPD Chief Jesse Curry was a Kremlin stooge, too.
8. Walker put the word “Loner” in quotation marks when referring to LHO, to indicate that LHO was never a “Loner,” but always connected with the Kremlin. Also, the “two Chiefs of State” who protected LHO were JFK and RFK.
We cannot dismiss these musings by Ex-General Walker as the ramblings of a senior citizen. Millions of members of the John Birch Society and other US rightist groups held the same views.
7. WALKER-KENNEDY
On December 12, 1981 Walker wrote an article entitled WALKER-KENNEDY which again cites the April 10, 1963 shooting. Walker wrote of himself in the third person as he again repeated the DNZ story in nearly every detail:
John F. Kennedy would be alive today if there had not been a conspiracy against law, justice, and Edwin A. Walker – a conspiracy denying Walker the name and knowledge of Lee Harvey Oswald… Both the FBI and the Dallas Police Department knew, months before Oswald killed the President, that he was the one who attempted to assassinate Edwin A. Walker… Had the FBI-DPD not conspired in the protection of Oswald for seven months, he would have been prosecuted by Walker and thereby removed from the streets of Dallas. (Walker, 1981)
Here is that amazing phrase, again in harmony with the DNZ article -- the JFK "would be alive today if there had not been a conspiracy against...Walker." Here the secret culprits are the FBI and the DPD. If only they had shared their information with Walker back in April, they could have kept Oswald off the streets – and then JFK would still be alive.
8. THE TROJAN HORSE - USA
On September 9, 1983, Walker typed the article, THE TROJAN HORSE – USA, that once again reminds us of the DNZ article – with interesting differences. Near the end of his article he wrote:
…A campaign for governor considered a must to keep from being secretly put away or killed (both tried and failed)…Attempted assassination by Lee H. Oswald, 9pm April 10, 1963, whose release from midnight custody was directed by the Kennedys before 7am – he kills the President in November, the first time his name or stay in Russia (1959-62) was known to Walker, Germany (1959-61).
Here again, Oswald is the April shooter; he is arrested; he is released by the Kennedys; he goes on to assassinate JFK. This time however, Walker repeats his WC fib claiming that he never heard of Oswald until the day JFK was assassinated. In this claim, obviously, Walker contradicted his own 1975 letter to Senator Frank Church, and other letters.
Yet the new element in this article is Walker’s explanation for his 1962 campaign for Texas governor. It was to avoid being “put away” (as RFK had put him in an insane asylum in October 1962). It was to avoid being “killed” (as in LHO’s April 10th shooting in 1963). The new element is bizarre, however, since his February 1962 campaign was earlier than the other two events. (By the 1980’s, apparently, Walker was losing track of his own conspiracy theory.)
9. UNPUBLISHED DRAFTS
In September 1989, Walker wrote two unpublished drafts, entitled: (1) THE SECRET SERVICE LETTER; and (2) THE DECEMBER COVER-UP. In both drafts, Walker cited the April 10, 1963 shooting in an incoherent, rambling conspiracy theory involving the Secret Service, the KGB, Marina Oswald, and Chief Jesse Curry.
10. JFK DIDN’T KNOW HE KNEW HIS ASSASSIN
Finally, on November 11, 1991, at 82 years of age, Walker wrote a short article entitled, JFK DIDN'T KNOW HE KNEW HIS ASSASSIN. He signed it with a shaky writing hand. The article was published by the Kerrville Daily Times on January 19, 1992. Walker died at 84. I reproduce this letter in full:
JFK DIDN'T KNOW HE KNEW HIS ASSASSIN: A common assassin with a dead President – Commander in Chief is an ugly experience since 1963.
The President went to Dallas knowing and protecting his November assassin Lee H. Oswald from prosecution for his April Crime, “Attempted Assassination of the former General working at his desk in his Dallas home, 9:00 p.m. April 10.”
The Kennedy protection included an early-morning, secret release of the prime suspect Lee H. Oswald, from Dallas Police Custody on Kennedy orders, April 11.
The President did not live to know that he knew his assassin but everyone else lived to know that he did and that his assassin could not be prosecuted for the November Crime because of his Kennedy protection from prosecution for his April Crime.
The law does not provide for protection and prosecution at the same time. Only by the election of a new government could the protection be eliminated. The common assassin was dead within forty-eight hours, Friday to Sunday.
Nov. 1991 Edwin A. Walker, Dallas
Here Walker repeats key elements of the DNZ article. Here the villain who released LHO from his Dallas prison is simply named “Kennedy.” This “Kennedy” protected LHO because he was using LHO – and it backfired.
After nearly 30 years, the resigned General Walker was still obsessed with his April shooter and the way that it connected his personal biography with the JFK Assassination.
Perhaps Walker was merely amused by the connection and so he merely noodled around with the story for 30 years. Perhaps Walker invented fictions to repeat his song that the Communists killed JFK (and RFK) just as they tried to kill him. Perhaps Walker was obsessed to place himself in every aspect of the JFK investigation through 1979. Or, perhaps Walker was confessing to future generations of Americans how he was personally involved in the assassinations of JFK and RFK, so that the truth would finally come out.
Regards,
--Paul