Newsgroup posts by David Blackburst and Dave Reitzes
Article: 4414 of alt.conspiracy.jfk.moderated
From: blackburst@aol.com (Blackburst)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy.jfk.moderated
Subject: Re: Ferrie and Brading
Date: 25 Feb 1997 21:07:23 -0600
The call was made on 9/24/63 from 524-0147 to WH4-4970. 524-0147 was the number of Gill's office. The call records were turned over to Garrison's office by Gill's secretary Alice Guidroz on January 4, 1967. Several people in Gill's office had access to that phone, including Ferrie.
This proves my point: Don't go on second-hand sources. When a claim is replayed, it sometimes becomes distorted or exaggerated.
From: blackburst@aol.com (Blackburst)
Subject: Re: Earlier, Longer Ferrie FBI Interview 11/26/63
Date: 04 Jun 2000 00:00:00 GMT
Message-ID: <20000604005440.26404.00001475@ng-fh1.aol.com>
Peter Whitmey wrote:
>I was able to obtain photocopies of G. Wray Gill's
>long distance phone records, which had been subpoenaed by Garrison. I
>methodically went through them and typed out a list of all the calls made
>by David Ferrie (those which the
>secretary had drawn a line through had
>been made by other members of Gill's staff, and were mostly calls within
>Louisiana).
Peter Whitmey is a serious and reponsible researcher, but I respectfully disagree on this.
Secretary Alice Guidroz examined and marked the phone bills in January 1967, THREE YEARS after the assassination. She drew a line through all the calls she could identify as having been made by other staff in reference to office business. It is fair to say that some of the remaining calls were probably made by Ferrie, but it is not fair to presume that any specific call was made by him, considering there were nearly a dozen people working in the office. Can Peter or any other reader state categorically who made every call on their work telephone in June 1997?
>However, according to the phone records, Ferrie had been in Dallas or Ft.
>Worth on numerous occasions in 1962 and 1963
We know categorically that all the collect calls were made by Ferrie?
>One of the most famous
>calls Ferrie made
>was to a number in Chicago on Sept. 24, 1963
We know categorically that Ferrie made this call?
>One call that Garrison
>does not mention in either of his books was made by Ferrie to Gill's
>office (collect) from Houston, TX around Nov. 9 as I recall.
We know categorically that Ferrie made this call?
I wish I could be as certain as Peter that Ferrie made all the unidentified calls. I wish I could be certain that they were not made by Gill, Gilbert Bernstein, Gerard Schreiber, George W. Gill Jr., Alice Guidroz, Regina Francovich, Morris Brownlee, or a client who was sitting in the office, or some other party who happened to be there 3 years earlier, but I cannot.
Maybe Ferrie made the calls. But maybe he didn't.
From: blackburst@aol.com (Blackburst)
Subject: Re: Anatomy of a Factoid
Date: 29 May 1999 00:00:00 GMT
Message-ID: <19990529182338.19950.00006174@ng-ft1.aol.com>
Stugrad wrote:
[>Dave Reitzes wrote:]
>>The belief that this phone call was made by Ferrie stems from the fact
>>that in January 1967, the New Orleans DA's office subpoenaed Gill's 1963
>>phone records and asked Gill and an associate to cross out all the calls
>>for which they could account. Many assume that all the calls remaining can
>>be attributed to Dave Ferrie, but researcher David Blackburst points out
>>that not only were Gill and his associate asked to determine who made
>>which calls three years after the fact, but at least eleven people worked
>>out of Gill's office in September 1963.
>
>Does Blackburst have a source for this claim? And does he have the names
>of the people? We can resolve this now, by contacting them and seeing if
>any knew Jean Aase.
As for the date of the checking of the phone records, secretary Alice Guidroz initialled and dated the phone records. Among those working in the office in 1963, by their own accounts, were:
G. Wray Gill Sr.
Gilbert Bernstein
Gerard H. Schreiber
George W. Gill Jr.
Alice Guidroz
Regina Francovich
David W. Ferrie
Morris L. Brownlee
plus 1 other secretary and 2 investigators.
> Any one of the phone calls
>>attributed to Ferrie could have been made by a G. Wray Gill partner,
>>investigator or secretary (8). Ferrie, of course, was dead by the time
>>Garrison announced his discovery, so he could not help with the matter.
>
>*COULD* have doesn't count as a debunking? Apparently, you and some LNers
>think that giving the benefit of the doubt substitutes for fact.
I'm not an LNer. But the possibilty that others had access to the phone weakens the claim that it was made by Ferrie, and Ferrie alone. This is not an insubstantial point. It means the difference between an unrelated phone call and a Ferrie-Ruby link. Objectively, don't we need to take this into consideration? To suggest that the facts might not add up to the conclusions does not equate with merely giving the benfit of doubt. Maybe he made the call. But maybe he didn't.
00
Dave
From: blackburst@aol.com (Blackburst)
Subject: Re: Dave Ferrie in Texas
Date: 13 Jun 1999 00:00:00 GMT
Message-ID: <19990613003814.13505.00000692@ng-ce1.aol.com>
Peter:
In a recent post, which I can't find, you mentioned that Gill's phone records show collect calls being made from Dallas. I asked if you could save me some research time by giving the dates, but I never got your response.
I finally pulled my file on the phone records, and in a quick perusal, I find the following:
5/28 New Orleans LA from Dallas Tex
4 minutes
5/29 New Orleans LA from Dallas Tex
4 minutes
Followed by
6/6 New Orleans fron Washington DC
4 minutes
Are these the calls you are referring to?
PS- It is often stated that the phone records do not show calls from October and November, but my listing has calls from every month of 1963, including some 50 from October and November, including November 20.
oo
David Blackburst
From: blackburst@aol.com (Blackburst)
Subject: Re: Earlier, Longer Ferrie FBI Interview 11/26/63
Date: 07 Jun 2000 00:00:00 GMT
Message-ID: <20000607193705.19749.00004180@ng-ct1.aol.com>
Peter Whitmey wrote:
[...]
>If one looks through
>the phone bills as I did
I have also had the Gill phone records since the early 90s.
> it is quite apparent that all of Gill's staff
>except Ferrie had no need to make long distance calls outside of
>Louisiana
How is this apparent from the phone bills?
>since most of Gill's legal work (except for Marcello) was
>within the state.
Most of Ferrie's legal work for Gill (except for Marcello) was within the state.
>For two solid years, calls were being made that may
>or may not have had anything to do with Gill's legal business to
>just about every major city (at some smaller places) in the U.S.
But neither of us has the bills from before or after Ferrie's two years with the office to compare, to see if the incidence of long-distance calls was higher during that period.
>As I stated before, one phone bill was missing - Nov.
>1963!!!
Correct, but some of the November calls do appear in the listing.
>when it comes to David Ferrie, who had been fired by Eastern Airlines
>for immoral behaviour with young boys, who had a mail-order Ph.D., who
>had been expelled from a Cleveland Seminary when he was a young man, who
>appeared to use his position with the CAP as a means of attracting
>young, impressionable boys, who
>publicly expressed his hatred for JFK,
>who was quite willing to work for a Mafia leader (who also hated JFK)
>and who helped organize illegal anti-Castro operations in Louisiana, why
>should we believe that he hadn't been to Dallas in ten years?
Because he said so. Why should we disbelieve him? What does this litany of Ferrie's sins have to do with whether or not Ferrie made ALL the unaccounted-for calls?
>Keep in mind that an NBC reporter >described a man whom he talked to in
>Dallas by the name of "Fairie" or "Fairy" >who fit David Ferrie's description.
Richard Billings checked this story with the source, Bob Mulholland, and wrote on Februaury 14, 1967: "Mulholland said he did not speak to anyone in Dallas as he was busy with the NBC crew. He recalled that he probably heard [the Ferrie story] from John Corporan of NBC News in New Orleans." Corporan told Billings "We got an anonymous tip and one from a former assistant DA about this man who had an airplane and that this man was in Texas on Nov. 22. This man, Ferrie, had known Oswald in the Civil Air Patrol. He was probably a homosexual. There was something about a rendezvous having been arranged to fly Oswald out of the country." Billings continues: "Corporan says he then called Garrison to find out about the tip. 'I didn't have too much success'. He then called Mulholland in Dallas...On Monday Ferrie called Corporan...Ferrie convinced Corporan that 'someone had very cleverly linked Ferrie to Oswald, knowing it looked believable. Ferrie was very upset.'"
There, you have the real story. The document you cite was a garbled hearsay report. Mulholland said he got the story from Corporan. Corporan said he got it from an anonymous tipster (Jack Martin admitted that Corporan was one of the people he called), a former assistant DA (a garbled description of Herman Kohlman, who got his story from Martin?) and Garrison (who did get his story from Martin.) And the details all jibe with the story Martin was telling that weekend.
This illustrates the need to regard a single hearsay document with some skepticism, and seek either corroboration or clarification, before citing it as fact.
Peter cited this document as corroboration that Ferrie was lying and WAS in Dallas, but Mulholland and Corporan say it ain't so.
I return to my original point: The calls on the phone bills were those that could not be accounted for in 1967. Some may have been made by Ferrie. Some may have been made by others. The evidence does NOT support Peter's assertion that it is an absolute FACT that Ferrie made any particular call.
oo
David Blackburst
From: dreitzes@aol.com (Dave Reitzes)
Subject: Re: Earlier, Longer Ferrie FBI Interview 11/26/63
Date: 07 Jun 2000 00:00:00 GMT
Message-ID: <20000607130118.15836.00000080@ng-fk1.aol.com>
[...]
>From: prwhitmey@yahoo.com
>Keep in
>mind that an NBC reporter described a man whom he talked to in Dallas
>by the name of "Fairie" or "Fairy" who fit David Ferrie's description.
Oh, really? Do you mean Bob Mulholland of NBC in Chicago? As reported by Dallas cameraman Gene Barnes?
Barnes said Bob Mulholland, NBC News, Chicago, talked in Dallas to one Fairy, a narcotics addict now out on bail on a sodomy charge in Dallas. Fairy said that Oswald had been under hypnosis from a man doing a mind-reading act at Ruby's "Carousel." Fairy was said to be a private detective and the owner of an airplane who took young boys on flights "just for kicks." (WC Exhibit 2038, Volume XXIV.)Are you unaware that Bob Mulholland specifically told Peter Noyes that he had been misquoted by Barnes?
In an interview with me in Los Angeles Mulholland insisted he had been quoted incorrectly in the Warren report. He said shortly after the assassination he heard FBI agents mention Ferrie's name and a possible link to Oswald, and he relayed that information to his reporters in Dallas. (Peter Noyes, Legacy of Doubt, 117.)Is it not also obvious that Barnes is conflating at least two or three different hearsay accounts about Ferrie, Oswald, Breck Wall and possibly others into one dubious story?
And please don't start about how the FBI agents heard David Ferrie's name -- Jerry Shinley thoughtfully cited the FBI's interviews with Jack Martin from November 1963, interviews instigated by Martin's numerous phone calls to local law enforcement officials, federal investigators and members of the press on the days following the assassination.
Good ol' Jack Martin, a diagnosed sociopath who, by all accounts, hated Dave Ferrie's guts.
Dave
Subject: Re: Earlier, Longer Ferrie FBI Interview 11/26/63
Dave Reitzes wrote:
It's in the Billings collection at Georgetown. It's a 2/14/67 memo from Billings to [FNU] Haskell, or from Haskell to Billings.
oo
Date: 06/08/2000
Author: Blackburst
>Where did Billings' statement
>[on the true story behind the Mulholland-Ferrie story]
>appear, David?
DavidMore on the subject of the alleged Ferrie-Ruby phone connection