<photo: Ruth Paine in 1963>
Dear Ruth Paine,
A dozen years ago you agreed to let me interview you for my US History studies at UT Austin. In preparation for that interview I read every word of your Warren Commission (WC) testimony – some 5,000 questions worth. In appreciation, I updated the Wikipedia entry for your name – simply summarizing your WC testimony for easy reading.
We left that interview with an open question, however. Let me explain.
You've given more interviews and speeches on the JFK Assassination than any other WC witness – always consistent with your WC testimony. In your interviews you were often asked this question:
· The WC reported that your telephone was wire-tapped on the day JFK was killed, and that a secret listener heard Michael Paine say to you, ‘Lee didn't kill Kennedy, but we both know who did.' Did Michael say that to you? And if so, who did you both 'know' killed President Kennedy (JFK)?
You told me that Michael actually did say that, meaning it rhetorically – generically. That is, the parties you both 'knew' that killed JFK were the nameless ones who had published the infamous WANTED FOR TREASON: JFK handbills that circulated so widely in Dallas, as well as those who published the infamous, WELCOME MR. KENNEDY TO DALLAS, black-bordered Ad in the Dallas Morning News, accusing JFK of supporting Communism.
In my research, Michael’s intuition was 100% correct. The killers of JFK did indeed publish those scurrilous documents. But the open question remaining was yours – you asked, "Who in the world wire-tapped our telephone?" You repeatedly asked WC and Dallas authorities that question – but never got an answer.
My open letter to you today is my attempt to answer that question.
The WC asked Robert Alan Surrey specifically about those two publications – in two dozen questions – and Surrey took the Fifth every time. Surrey, you may know, had his business offices inside the home of the resigned General Edwin Walker – the racist activist in Dallas who had started the deadly riots at Ole Miss in 1962, attempting to block the registration of James Meredith, the first black college student at Ole Miss. (Surry was present at Ole Miss with Walker.)
But Robert Alan Surrey and General Walker did not act alone in the publication of those two scurrilous advertisements and their deadly intention. Here is my list of suspects:
1. Dallas Secret Service Agent Forrest Sorrels (in secrecy from Washington DC)
2. Dallas FBI Agent James Hosty, Jr. (n secrecy from Washington DC)
3. Various members of the Dallas John Birch Society
4. Various members of the Dallas Minutemen
5. Various rogue members of Dallas Law Enforcement
6. Dallas Deputy Sheriff Buddy Walthers (in a leading role)
7. Dallas Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig (gullibly)
I propose this – these JFK conspirators in Dallas were the ones who had your phone tapped – several days before the JFK Assassination. They listened to your every word, seeking ways to link you with Lee Harvey Oswald (LHO) whom they had plotted to blame.
That is – to the JFK conspirators, the Paines were to be as much a target of their prosecution as LHO. They were coming after you and Michael.
They Dallas plotters never tired of claiming that the Communists killed JFK (and so the US should invade Cuba right away). LHO (posing as a supporter of Fidel Castro, but actually an underground against Castro) was widely, deliberately publicized in New Orleans as a Castro supporter by his racist leader, Guy Banister. (Banister had been trying to infiltrate the FPCC for a year and LHO was his tool).
Your support of Marina Oswald at your home was a red flag for the Dallas radical right in 1963, who (like Walker and Surrey) believed that Marina was a KGB agent. Ridiculous, I know, but this was their stated belief. In their minds, LHO and Marina were KGB spies, so that you and Michael were KGB accomplices – deliberate or not.
I say Dallas FBI Agent James Hosty was in their number – and he came to your house a number of times in the weeks before the JFK Assassination. He claimed he was there to see Marina – but his main questions to you were about LHO.
Hosty's book on the topic of the JFK Assassination ("Assignment Oswald," 1996) expressed his suspicions about Marina, as follows:
“My objective was to conduct an in-depth interview of Marina Oswald
to determine whether she posed any national security risk.” (Hosty. p. 49).
But a few lines later Hosty also wrote:
“What if Ruth Paine was a Communist?” (Hosty, p. 49)
The theme of Hosty’s book is his accusation that LHO was working directly with known KGB assassin Valeriy Kostikov to assassinate JFK. Another absurdity, but a continuing belief among the US radical right.
By the way, Hosty was not originally assigned by the FBI to track Lee Harvey Oswald; nor even Marina Oswald. His original assignment was to track General Walker and the radical right in Dallas (as he himself admits on page 4 of his book). But sometimes people can turn.
Hosty’s fishing for data on LHO from you was a part of his turn toward fanatical anti-Communism in 1963. In my reading, Hosty and Sorrels (who had high authority in Dallas) ordered the wire-tap of your telephone about a week before the JFK Assassination and they spied on all your conversations.
Next, Buddy Walthers, one of the police who came to your home soon after JFK was killed. I name him in this context because of his famous false claim, that in your garage he "found six or seven metal filing cabinets full of letters, maps, records and index cards with names of pro-Castro sympathizers."
That was a lie (though some people still believe it today). No photos of the alleged filing cabinets exist. No police inventory record of the cabinets exists. No other witnesses of the cabinets ever surfaced. Yet Buddy Walthers boasted this on the day of the JFK assassination.
Why would a Dallas Deputy Sheriff lie like that? Because, I say, he and his conspirators were willing to use your Liberal politics in their game plan to blame the JFK Assassination on anybody close to LHO that they could accuse of Communism as momentum for their plot.
Now, the reason I named Dallas Deputy Roger Craig in this context was because of his perjury to the WC that he saw specifically your station wagon driving LHO away from Dealey Plaza only minutes after the JFK Assassination.
Roger Craig brought your name into his claim by adding that at the police station, inside Captain Will Fritz’s office where LHO was being interrogated – he confronted LHO with his claim, and LHO said, “That car belongs to Ruth Paine! You leave her out of this!”
That was another lie. Even Will Fritz denied that ever happened. But again – why would a Dallas Deput lie like that? I say Craig (a simple man) was following Buddy Walthers’ early plan to bring you to prosecution for helping the Oswalds.
There is a key question – why would Deputy Roger Craig tell this to the WC attorneys, fully expecting Captain Fritz to back up his bogus story? My inference – there was a point before the JFK Assassination that Captain Fritz had agreed to the story. But the very day after the JFK Assassination, the powerful officials in Washington DC ordered Dallas to stop trying to blame the Communists.
In fact, all US spies worldwide reported that USSR and Cuba had nothing to do with the JFK Assassination. Washington accepted their reports – and recognized that Dallas had no shred of hard evidence to support their claims. So, Dallas was ordered to stop. And they did, officially.
Underground, though, in the back rooms of the radical right wing, leaders howled that this was proof that all of Washington DC was supporting the Communists. They simply doubled down.
In all the WC testimony of over 400 witnesses, perhaps 2% still tried to float the rumor that the Communists killed JFK. General Walker was one. Robert Alan Surrey, another. Revilo Oliver was another. The rumor still persists today – with just as little evidence.
So, in my view, Roger Craig was such a simple man that even though all Dallas officials who testified for the WC had changed their tune about Communists killing JFK, he didn’t get the memo. So as late as 1964, when he testified for the WC, he named your station wagon as a suspect along with LHO.
Even Buddy Walthers stopped his claim! Even Captain Fritz stopped his claim! Almost all Dallas witnesses had been converted to the idea that LHO was the “lone gunman.”
Yet what I see is an active plot against you and Michael Paine – and the wire-tapping of your telephone was only the tip of the iceberg. If the Dallas radical right had fulfilled their intention to mobilize the US toward fanatical anti-Communism and the invasion of Cuba, then IMO you and Michael Paine would likely have become the new “Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.”
So, that’s what I wanted to convey to you, Ruth. They were coming after you, too. Yes you were honest and cooperative – but they were fanatics who didn’t care. The only reason they failed was because Washington DC had flatly rejected every report coming out of Dallas about the Communists killing JFK.
J. Edgar Hoover repeated that to the WC. He knew the Communists didn’t kill JFK, because he knew who did. However – Hoover also knew that our Cold War with the Communists was still raging, and therefore the truth that the US radical right had killed JFK would have become chaotic on US streets! It would have given the Soviets a major propaganda victory! So, the Truth had to be hidden in the interest of national security – for as long as Cold War raged on.
To get the blame off of the radical left and the radical right, Hoover came up with the idea of blaming LHO solely and only. Today – 60 years later – that remains a US dogma, despite countless cracks in the story and a majority of Americans who reject it.
In my reading, LHO wasn't innocent. LHO was working with the plotters who would make him their patsy; he knew many of their names. Jim Garrison said the same – LHO knew Guy Banister, David Ferrie, Clay Shaw, and many others in New Orleans. They probably told LHO they were with the CIA, and LHO probably believed them, but actually they were Minutemen, by and large.
LHO knew their allies in Dallas. LHO handed them his rifle that day. He was as guilty as they were – but he never acted alone. You and Marina always thought Lee always acted alone because that was all that LHO ever let you both see. Even when he tried to kill General Walker, he told Marina he was alone and took a bus to and from Walker’s home. Marina believed it.
The irony is that the WC asked you and Marina more questions by far than most other witnesses, yet you and Marina knew LESS about the JFK Assassination than perhaps anybody else. Yet they were coming after you, too, Ruth. It was the Cold War. Even an innocent flower can be trampled in an elephant war dance.
Best regards,
--Paul Trejo
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