CTKA: Citizens for Truth about the Kennedy Assassination
Part 3 - Journalists & JFK – The Real Dizinformation Agents at Dealey Plaza
Hugh Aynesworth, Priscilla Johnson (McMillan) & Gordon McLendon

By Bill Kelly (bkjfk3@yahoo.com] July 2011

Besides their reporting on the assassination of President Kennedy, Hugh Aynesworth, Priscilla Johnson and Gordon McLendon share an interesting common trait in that they applied for jobs with the CIA and didn't get them. But rather than become full fledged agents, it appears they were assigned a contact officer and served as CIA assets for decades, which is especially interesting in how their CIA associations affected their activities related to the assassination.

 

HUGH AYNESWORTH

As a local reporter for J. Bannerman Dealey's Dallas Times Herald, Hugh Aynesworth was all over the place during the assassination weekend. He was at Dealey Plaza, the Tippit murder scene, the Texas Theater where the accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested, the house in Irving where Oswald's wife lived, the rooming house where Oswald lived and the Dallas Police Department where he was killed.[1]

It's important to mention Aynesworth's background and his presence at so many crime scenes because while it always seemed suspicious, and his CIA ties were confirmed with the release of CIA records by the JFK Act.

As Jim DiEugenio notes, "many more pages of documents have been released showing how tightly bound Aynesworth was with the intelligence community. It has been demonstrated that Aynesworth was – at the minimum – working with the Dallas Police, Shaw's defense team, and the FBI. He was also an informant to the White House, and had once applied for work with the CIA. As I have noted elsewhere, in the annals of this case, I can think of no reporter who had such extensive contacts with those trying to cover up the facts in the JFK case..."[2]

Rex Bradford, the web master of Mary Ferrell's extensive files on the case wrote, "Declassified documents show that Dallas reporter Hugh Aynesworth was in contact with the Dallas CIA office and had on at least one occasion 'offered his services to us.' The files are chock full of Aynesworth informing to the FBI, particularly in regard to the Garrison investigation….Also of note is a message Aynesworth sent to…LBJ's White House, in which Aynesworth wrote that 'My interest in informing government officials of each step along the way is because of my intimate knowledge of what Jim Garrison is planning.'" [3]

Most incredible however, is the CIA report written on October 10, 1963 when J. Walton Moore, the head of the Dallas CIA Domestic Contacts Division reported to the Chief of the Contact Division on "the possibility of Hugh Grant Aynesworth making a trip to Cuba."[4]

One month before the assassination J. Walton Moore - the same CIA agent who has been meeting regularly with the accused assassin's best friend George DeMohrenschildt, is also meeting with Hugh Aynesworth about going to Cuba.

Moore's first mission with the OSS during Word War II was to China with Charles Ford, who later became the CIA agent assigned to work with RFK at JMWAVE. Using an Italian alias, Ford worked with John Rosselli, the mafia boss the CIA previously recruited to kill Castro. In his interview with the Church Committee, Ford said they were trying to overthrow, not kill Castro, but those who have it in for RFK use Ford as a lynchpin to crucify Bobby, as we have seen with Sy Hersh in the Dark Side of Camelot, Evan Thomas in Robert Kennedy – His Life, and David Kaiser in The Road to Dallas, and Max Holland. But with the release of Ford's records by the JFK Act, they have all gone silent. [5]

However there could be an association between Hugh Aynesworth, J. Walton Moore, Charles Ford and David Atlee Phillips, especially in regards to the timing of Moore's memo and Phllips' travels, not just as it relates to Cuba, but to what happened at Dealey Plaza. This is especially so since J. Walton Moore – the CIA contact agent to the accused assassin's best friend, served in the same capacity with Hugh Aynesworth about a trip to Cuba a month before the assassination. And the day before Aynesworth met with Moore, David Phillips was at JMWAVE, the CIA's Miami, Florida base, where anti-Castro operations were planned and carried out.[6]

How did these damning records get released? And if this was released, what's in the thousands of documents that are totally redacted or are still partially withheld for reasons of national security? Many of these withheld records include many pages of the files of Hugh Aynesworth, Priscilla Johnson and Gordon McLendon.

As David Talbot points out, "…some of these journalists did the CIA's bidding: see, for instance, a January 25, 1968 CIA memo on Hugh Aynesworth, who covered the JFK assassination, first for the Dallas Morning News and then Newsweek. Aynesworth – who at one time, according to the memo, 'expressed some interest…in possible employment with the Agency' – was considered by the CIA to be a solid 'Warren Commission man on the assassination.'"[7]

And indeed he was. He eagerly did the agencies bidding to squash the Garrison investigation, and he doesn't consider the Kennedy assassination among the unsolved homicides in his 1994 book Murders Among Us: Unsolved Homicides, Mysterious Deaths and Killers at Large.[8] But his article, "The Strangest Story I Ever Covered," details how he came to expose the head of the local crime commission was himself a criminal who had crafted a new identity to hide his past. So Aynesworth is capable of uncovering conspiracies when he wants to. If he applied the same investigative skills to the homicide at Dealey Plaza, perhaps he would have helped uncover the truth instead of promoting the cover story and blaming the murder on the patsy.[9]

Joseph Goulden was one of Hugh Aynesworth's colleagues who also covered the events in Dallas and also pushed the lone-nut myth. When rumors began to circulate that Oswald was an FBI informant, and was even assigned an informant number, Aynesworth, along with Houston reporter Lonnie Hudkins and Goulden, floated the story that they had made up an informant number to make it seem real. The Warren Commission held a closed door executive session to discuss it, and former CIA director Allen Dulles explained that even if Oswald was an informant, there would be no record of it, though there was a record of Jack Ruby being such an FBI informant.[10]

Just as there was a lot of friction between the FBI and the Dallas Police, there was also friction between the FBI and the Secret Service and the FBI and the CIA. So Goulden's story actually took some of the heat off the CIA, especially in regards to Oswald's defection to the Soviet Union and his trip to Mexico City, both of which called unwanted attention to CIA operations they wanted to keep secret.

It was also a diversion that appeared to dissipate when Aynesworth and Goulden acknowledged the story was bogus. So the idea of Oswald as intelligence operative went south and the public image now became one of the deranged loser, and lone nut assassin.

Today, both Aynesworth and Goulden write for the Washington Times newspaper, founded by Sun Myung Moon and owned by the Unification Church, who some suspect acts as a front for the CIA.[11]

When Priscilla Johnson McMillan testified before the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), she said that in the course of researching Marina's story, she discovered who actually obtained and leaked Oswald's "Historic Diary" to the Dallas Morning News and Lifemagazine.[12]

Who was it? Hugh Aynesworth.....
CONTINUED AT: CTKA: Citizens for Truth about the Kennedy Assassination

Many thanks to Jimmy DiEugenio for posting my stuff at CTKA and to Debra for editing it.
BK

JFKcountercoup
 

Edited by William Kelly, 26 July 2011 - 03:12 AM.

Does anyone else find it peculiar that Hugh Aynesworth met with J. Walton Moore, the head of the Dallas Domestics Contacts Division and George DeMohrenschildt's contact in the CIA in October 1963 and told Moore he was going to Cuba?

Did Aynesworth ever go to Cuba?

Did he frequently report his activities to Moore?

Is there a connection between Aynesworth's contact with Moore and David A. Philips meetings at JMWAVE the following days?


BK
 

from newsregisteronline.com

The eyes that saw it all
By Grant V Ziegler

http://newsregisteronline.com/?p=1223

Aynesworth's visit was sponsored by The Press Club of Dallas.
 

Here is Jim DiEugenio's article "Hugh Aynesworth: Refusing a Conspiracy is his Life's Work"

http://www.ctka.net/aynesworth.html

At the time of the assassination, Hugh Aynesworth was a reporter for the Dallas Morning News. He has maintained that on November 22, 1963 he was in Dealey Plaza and a witness to the assassination --- although there is no photograph that reveals such. At times, he has also maintained he was at the scene where Tippit was shot --- although it is difficult to locate a time for his being there. He has also stated that he was at the Texas Theater where Oswald was arrested --- although, again, no film or photo attests to this. Further, he has written that he was in the basement of the Dallas Police Department when Oswald was killed by Jack Ruby. Like Priscilla Johnson, Aynesworth soon decided to make his career out of this event. As we shall see, it is quite clear that he made up his mind immediately about Oswald's guilt. Long before the Warren Report was issued. In fact, he tried to influence their verdict.

On July 21, 1964 Aynesworth's name surfaced in the newspapers in Dallas in a column by his friend Holmes Alexander. Alexander implied that Aynesworth did not trust Earl Warren and therefore was conducting his own investigation of the Kennedy murder. He was ready to reveal that the FBI knew Oswald was a potential assassin and blew their assignment. He also had talked to Marina Oswald and she had told him that Oswald had also threatened to kill Richard Nixon. Alexander goes on to say that these kinds of incidents show the mind of a killer at work. That "of a hard-driven, politically radical Leftist which is emerging from the small amount of news put out by the Warren Commission. If the full report follows the expected line, Oswald will be shown as a homicidal maniac." Holmes concludes his piece with a warning: If the Commission's verdict "jibes with that of Aynesworth's independent research, credibility will be added to its findings. If [it] does not there will be some explaining to do." Clearly, Aynesworth contributed mightily to the article, had decided Oswald had done it even before the Commission had revealed its evidence, and was bent on destroying its credibility if it differed from his opinion.

The story about Marina and Nixon was so farfetched that not even the Warren Commission bought into it (Warren Report pp. 187-188). It has been demolished by many authors; most notably Peter Scott who notes that to believe it, Marina had to have locked Oswald in the bathroom to keep him from committing this murderous act; yet the bathroom locked from the inside. Also, as the Commission noted in the pages above, Nixon was not in Dallas until several months after the alleged incident. Further, there was no announcement in any local newspaper that Nixon was going to be in Dallas at this time period --- April of 1963. Since Aynesworth was quite close to Marina at this time (he actually bragged to some friends that he was sleeping with her) it may be that he foisted the quite incredible story on her in his attempt to portray Oswald as the Leftist, homicidal maniac he related to Holmes Alexander.

Aynesworth was also out to profit personally from the tragedy. In late June of 1964, Oswald's alleged diary from his Russian days appeared in Aynesworth's newspaper with a commentary by the reporter. Two weeks later it also appeared in U. S. News and World Report. An FBI investigation followed to see how this material leaked into the press. In declassified documents, it appears that the diary was pilfered from the Dallas Police archives by the notorious assistant DA Bill Alexander and then given to his friend Aynesworth. Aynesworth then put it on the market to other magazines including Newsweek. It eventually ended up in Life magazine also. Alexander, Aynesworth and the reporter's wife Paula split thousands of dollars. Oswald's widow was paid later by Life since, originally, Aynesworth had illegally cut her out of the deal. In another FBI report of July 7th, it also appears that Aynesworth was using the so-called diary for career advancement purposes. A source told the Bureau that part of the deal with Newsweek was that Aynesworth was to become their Dallas correspondent. As the Bureau noted, Aynesworth did become their Dallas stringer afterward. (It is interesting to note here that the "diary" has been shown to have been not a real diary at all. That is, it was not recorded on a daily basis but rather in two or three sittings.)

Right after this, in August of 1964, another trademark of Aynseworth's Kennedy career appeared: his penchant to attack and ridicule anyone who disagreed with him. Aynesworth published a review of Joachim Joesten's early book on the case entitled Oswald: Assassin or Fall Guy. The review is not really a review at all, it is just a string of invective directed at the author for believing such silly notions that Oswald could have been innocent and that he could have been an agent of the FBI and/or CIA. When rumors circulated that Oswald had been an FBI informant, which he apparently was, Aynesworth went to work discrediting them saying that it was all a joke he had made up --- even though he was not the source of the quite specific information.
In December of 1966, Aynesworth surfaced again on the Kennedy case. At this time Life was doing its ill-fated reinvestigation of the murder led by Holland McCombs and Richard Billings. Somehow, probably through McCombs who was a good friend of Clay Shaw, Aynesworth was a part of this investigation. Aynesworth began informing on the intricacies of the probe to the FBI. For instance on December 12th, Aynesworth informed the Bureau that they had discovered a man who connected Oswald with Ruby. Aynesworth turned over a copy of this report to the FBI. He also then told the Bureau that Mark Lane was a homosexual and had to drop his political career because of these allegations. At the end of the interview Aynesworth "specifically requested" his identity and his sources not be disclosed outside the Bureau.

Billings' investigation eventually and perhaps inevitably ran into the initial stages of the secret probe being conducted by District Attorney Jim Garrison. And because a mutual acquaintance of Billings and Garrison, David Chandler, was involved, Aynesworth was one of the first people to discover what Garrison was doing. The unsuspecting Garrison actually granted the duplicitous reporter an interview in his home. After the interview, Aynesworth wrote a note to McCombs that they should not let the DA know they were playing "both sides." Recall, this was the first time they had met face to face! So much for a modicum of objectivity.
Almost immediately Aynesworth set out to smear Garrison in the national press, to obstruct him by cooperating with law enforcement agencies who were opposed to the DA, and to defeat him in court by extending his services to Shaw's lawyers. All of the above is readily provable today as it had not been before the releases of the ARRB. It would not be hyperbole to write that no other reporter in recorded history had as much to do in opposing a DA both covertly and overtly as Aynesworth did in New Orleans from 1967-71. Especially when one extends Aynesworth's actions to connect with his two allies in this effort, namely James Phelan and the late Walter Sheridan. (Significantly, when the ARRB requested the files of Sheridan on the 1967 NBC special he produced, Sheridan's family sent them to NBC. And the network refused to turn them over.) Aynesworth's actions are too lengthy to be discussed here but they are recorded in detail in Probe Magazine (Vol. 4 No. 4) and also in the book The Assassinations: Probe Magazine on JFK, MLK, RFK, and Malcolm X (pp. 24-29). Aynesworth published an attack on Garrison in Newsweek on May 15, 1967 (about a week after Phelan's broadside had appeared in The Saturday Evening Post.) The "report" was clearly a venomous hatchet job that had one aim: to stigmatize Garrison and, by doing that, to neutralize his investigation by turning the public's attention away from his discoveries and toward the controversy being manufactured by Aynesworth, Phelan, and NBC's special which was to follow the next month. The article depicted Garrison as a modern day Robespierre whose investigation had bribed witnesses into making false claims, whose staff had threatened to murder a witness, and finally that Garrison was so possessed he held the entire city in thrall by terrorist tactics.
We have seen how Aynesworth informed on the Billings investigation with the FBI. On the Garrison case, he extended his reach. Before his article was printed, he forwarded a copy to George Christian who was press secretary for the White House. But not before he had called him and discussed his inflammatory and deceitful article. The actual telegram he sent is interesting in revealing his psychology. He tells Christian that he is informing because he is aware of what Garrison is up to. What, in Aynesworth's view, is he up to? He is trying "to make it seem that the FBI and CIA are involved in the JFK plot." But further, "he can ---and probably will --- do untold damage to this nation's image throughout the world." Finally, he tells Christian that although Garrison wants the government to defy him or to pressure a halt to his probe, that is not what they should do, "for that is exactly what Garrison wants." Of course, he again asked that his role be kept a secret. These last two assertions imply that Aynesworth would serve as the intermediary to obstruct Garrison clandestinely while claiming to be a reporter so that the government could keep its hands clean as he did their dirty work for them.
Further insight into Aynesworth's peculiar psychology came in an interview in 1979 on KERA, the Dallas PBS affiliate. He said there, "I'm not saying there wasn't a conspiracy. I know most people in this country believe there was a conspiracy. I just refuse to accept it and that's my life's work." In other words, what the facts are do not really matter to him. It's keeping the lid on a conspiracy to commit homicide that matters. (Wouldn't it have been interesting if Jennings would have confronted Aynesworth with that statement and asked him to explain his view of journalism in light of it?)

By the 1990's Aynesworth's role had been so exposed to those in the know that he couldn't appear at research conferences. So he did not show up at them himself --- as he may have, for surveillance purposes, earlier. Instead he arranged other conferences to eclipse them, as he did in 1993 for the 30th anniversary of the assassination. At this one in Dallas, someone asked him this: Had he ever cooperated with the government on a story prior to its publication? He denied it of course. Then the questioner read him the Christian memo quoted above.

Why couldn't Jennings do the same?

--- Jim DiEugenio
 

Edited by Robert Morrow, 02 March 2013 - 02:37 AM.

About a year or two ago I got Hugh Aynesworth on the phone and I asked him (after other questions) "Did you ever sleep with Marina Oswald?" (Another JFK researcher told me it was a possibility.)

His answer: no, but it was available if I wanted it and I think she was sleeping with her body guards.

Then I asked him, what did you think when you first saw the Zapruder Film? Doesn't that prove there was a shooter from the front (because of the back head snap) and doesn't it prove their was a conspiracy? His answer I can't not precise recall but it was quite lame - something about he had already gone down the lone nutter path and it was too late change (I am paraphrasing here).

I also asked Aynesworth - about that story of Oswald wanting to assassinate Richard Nixon, did you get that from Marina Oswald first or did you get it from somewhere else. Aynesworth's answer - he heard about that story from somewhere else first.

My opinion is Oswald/Nixon story was a fabrication by the government and they used Aynesworth to feed it to Marina Oswald and then act like it came from her. It was all about the posthumous frame up or pin-it-all on Oswald.
 

Edited by Robert Morrow, 22 April 2013 - 05:52 PM.

May 20, 1967 letter from Shirley Martin to Jim Garrison re Hugh Aynesworth: http://jfk.hood.edu/...ugh/Item 01.pdf
 

'Robert Morrow', on 02 Mar 2013 - 02:35 AM, said:

About a year or two ago I got Hugh Aynesworth on the phone and I asked him (after other questions) "Did you ever sleep with Marina Oswald?" (Another JFK researcher told me it was a possibility.)

His answer: no, but it was available if I wanted it and I think she was sleeping with her body guards.

Then I asked him, what did you think when you first saw the Zapruder Film? Doesn't that prove there was a shooter from the front (because of the back head snap) and doesn't it prove their was a conspiracy? His answer I can't not precise recall but it was quite lame - something about he had already gone down the lone nutter path and it was too late change (I am paraphrasing here).

I also asked Aynesworth - about that story of Oswald wanting to assassinate Richard Nixon, did you get that from Marina Oswald first or did you get it from somewhere else. Aynesworth's answer - he heard about that story from somewhere else first.

My opinion is Oswald/Nixon story was a fabrication by the government and they used Aynesworth to feed it to Marina Oswald and then act like it came from her. It was all about the posthumous frame up or pin-it-all on Oswald.
 

Leave it to Robert to find a sex angle here. The more things change.

Dawn
 

'Michael Hogan', on 22 Apr 2013 - 09:57 AM, said:

May 20, 1967 letter from Shirley Martin to Jim Garrison re Hugh Aynesworth: http://jfk.hood.edu/...ugh/Item 01.pdf
 

There are a lot of great nuggets in that letter. So Aynesworth admits he had an affair with Marina post assassination. I TOTALLY believe that.

But here is the key thinking of Aynesworth in 1964 "... a communist plot. Warren will do a cover-up for Moscow."

That is a red flag and a key marker - anyone who believes the Russians or Fidel Castro murdered John Kennedy. That was the line being pushed behind the scenes very early on by the murderers of John Kennedy. LBJ immediately was telling folks Fidel Castro did it. James Angleton CIA CI head for years pushed this fantasy and delivered it to several authors Edward Epstein and Joseph Trento. H.L. Hunt in the 1970's funded a book by Michael Eddowes with the thesis that the Russians murdered John Kennedy. Frank Sturgis in the 1970's gave some interviews where he pinned it on the Russians.

So there you have it: you have LBJ, Angleton who was the CIA's liaison with the Warren Commission, and an inner circle LBJ Dallas, TX oil executive ALL pushing the angle "the Russians did it." (Or Castro, in LBJ's case but I think he told others the Russians did it.) And CIA operative Frank Sturgis who E. Howard Hunt says was deeply involved in the JFK assassination.

Saying "the Russians killed JFK" is a pretty damn good marker for someone who was an actual perp in the JFK assassination. And that is the folks who Hugh Aynesworth has carried the water for for 5 decades.

The key American players in the JFK assassination were the ones who were blaming it on the Russians or Fidel Castro. Notice how the perps themselves never say it was the mafia or a lone nutter Oswald who did it.

I did speak to Aynesworth a year or 2 ago and he told me he originally believed it was a conspiracy, but he did not say what type of a conspiracy. I think he was too embarrassed to actually say he was full in on the "Russians did it" fantasy.

One more thing, in my emails with Dave Perry he says that he believes Oswald did it alone, but he implies that the Russians or the Cubans were telling Oswald to do it.
 

Edited by Robert Morrow, 22 April 2013 - 07:04 PM.

'Michael Hogan', on 22 Apr 2013 - 09:57 AM, said:

May 20, 1967 letter from Shirley Martin to Jim Garrison re Hugh Aynesworth: http://jfk.hood.edu/...ugh/Item 01.pdf
 

Opps I stand corrected re Robert. Nice to hear Ms. Martin in her own voice. Thanks for posting Mike.
Aynsworth has always been in their pocket. If Gary Mack should answer Jim's question I would love to see it, not holding my breath.
Dawn
 

'Dawn Meredith', on 22 Apr 2013 - 1:16 PM, said:

 

'Robert Morrow', on 02 Mar 2013 - 02:35 AM, said:

About a year or two ago I got Hugh Aynesworth on the phone and I asked him (after other questions) "Did you ever sleep with Marina Oswald?" (Another JFK researcher told me it was a possibility.)

His answer: no, but it was available if I wanted it and I think she was sleeping with her body guards.

Then I asked him, what did you think when you first saw the Zapruder Film? Doesn't that prove there was a shooter from the front (because of the back head snap) and doesn't it prove their was a conspiracy? His answer I can't not precise recall but it was quite lame - something about he had already gone down the lone nutter path and it was too late change (I am paraphrasing here).

I also asked Aynesworth - about that story of Oswald wanting to assassinate Richard Nixon, did you get that from Marina Oswald first or did you get it from somewhere else. Aynesworth's answer - he heard about that story from somewhere else first.

My opinion is Oswald/Nixon story was a fabrication by the government and they used Aynesworth to feed it to Marina Oswald and then act like it came from her. It was all about the posthumous frame up or pin-it-all on Oswald.
 

Leave it to Robert to find a sex angle here. The more things change.

Dawn
 

 

Leave it to Dawn Meredith to make a cheap, calorie empty comment.

A JFK researcher who you know told me that it was a very real possibility that Hugh Aynesworth had sex with Marina Oswald. And here we have Aynesworth admitting to Shirley Martin in 1964 that, yes indeed, he had sex with Marina. And I do think its important because look who is manipulating Marina to say all this utter bullshit about Oswald post assassination - such as Marina saying Oswald wanted to kill Nixon but petit me kept him barracaded in the bathroom so he could not do that. I asked Aynesworth about that and he told me he got that story from another source before Marina supposedly told it to him. I am sure the story is a total fabrication by whoever Aynesworth was coordinating with in government.
 

Edited by Robert Morrow, 22 April 2013 - 06:36 PM.

Aynesworth was a business writer for the Dallas Times Herald at 26, then was hired to work for United Press International in their Denver, Colorado news bureau in 1959.[2] While in Denver, he was stabbed in the throat by an unknown man who broke down his apartment door one night.[2] Those who speculated on the motivation for the attack believed Aynesworth may have been targeted in a case of mistaken identity or by a jealous husband.[2] Aynesworth himself reported he thought that the Teamsters may have been involved due to a story on which the UPI was working at the time.[2] While still bandaged from the attack, he interviewed and was hired by the Dallas Morning News in 1960.[2][4]



Mr aynesworth already had a prior history of sexual escapades as seen in his biography...also he was a jack ruby pallbearer ..one fbi informer burying another...how fitting
 

http://www.hughaynesworth.com/
 

Jim DiEugenio & Michael Hogan,

Could you please post the best web links and books on Hugh Aynesworth? You folks seem to know the JFK research material as well as anyone. I want to make up a reading list to educate folks/the media on the nature of Hugh Aynesworth. What books discuss him in detail? What are the best web links?

Sincerely,

Robert Morrow
 

Here is the text of the Shirley Martin letter to Jim Garrison:

 

May 20, 1967

 

Dear Mr. Garrison:

 

I am so sorry that Newsweek chose Hugh Aynesworth to use in its rebuttal of you.

 

In the summer of ‘64 I had a long talk with Mr. Aynesworth, introducing myself to him as a friend of a relative to General Clyde Watts, ex-Major General Edwin A. Walker's close friend and attorney (Oxford). Mr. Aynesworth mistakenly assumed that I was a political conservative and immediately deluged me with disgusting anti-Kennedy stories. ("Kennedy needed a trip to Dallas like a hole in the head," etc.) At the same time Mr. Aynesworth heaped what seemed to me to be inordinate praise on the city of Dallas, the Dallas police (Lt. George Butler, Captain Fritz, Chief Curry, etc.), and the Dallas Morning News (for which newspaper Aynesworth was working at the time). He confided, too, that Tom Buchanan (Paris) was a "fairy" and detailed for me a number of extremely slanderous alleged incidents in the life of Mark Lane. In addition, Mr. Aynesworth definitively labeled Mr. Lane a "communist."

 

Aynesworth was extremely bitter that Merriman Smith had won the Pulitzer for his coverage of the assassination. Aynesworth sarcastically remarked that Smith "did nothing and saw less" on the day in question, whereas he, Aynesworth was "...the only reporter in America to make all four big scenes." (1) In addition, Aynesworth boasted that a Commission attorney had already confided to him (in July) what the Commission verdict was to be (in September). Oswald would be named, but according to Aynesworth it was in reality "...a communist plot. Warren will do a cover-up for Moscow."

 

Aynesworth insisted that Marina had had an affair with him after the assassination, and that during this period she had revealed to him that she and Ruth Paine had shared a Lesbian relationship prior to November 22, 1963. Aynesworth also declared that he had been on 10th Street "looking down on the Tippit murder scene at 1:05pm, not later than 1:10..." on November 22nd. (2) Needless to say, the "only reporter in America" to be in on all four "big scenes" was NOT called to testify before the Warren Commission, which did, however, call Thayer Waldo, Fort Worth reporter, because he had been in the police basement when Ruby shot Oswald. (3)

 

Finally, I have the statement by an employee of the Dallas Morning News that Aynesworth was deliberately and ILLEGALLY given the allegedly stolen Oswald diary story by a Commission attorney who was in Dallas on business at that time. Earl Warren later put the FBI on the trail of this illegal "leak", but

as was to be expected no discoveries were made.

 

This, then, is the man chosen by Newsweek to rebut you. What a pity Newsweek's taste is so concentrated in its tail.

 

- Sincerely,

 

(Mrs.) Shirley Martin

Box 226

Owasso, Oklahoma

 

cc: 10

 

1

Dealey Plaza, 10th Street, Texas Theatre, Dallas police basement.

2

Thus negating the Commission claim that Oswald. shot both Kennedy and Tippit.

3

Waldo's testimony is pertinent in regard to Lt. Butler (not called by Commission.)

 

Edited by Robert Morrow, 21 May 2013 - 07:39 PM.