Free The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination by Lamar Waldron

Oswald wasn’t the only ex-Marine arrested and investigated for trying to kill JFK. In Chicago, Thomas Vallee, a seemingly troubled former Marine, was arrested on November 2, 1963, on the morning of JFK’s planned motorcade through that city. As people started to line the streets in anticipation of seeing JFK, the motorcade was suddenly called off—with two different phony excuses hurriedly given—because the Secret Service had learned that four possible assassins were at large. When arrested, Vallee had “an M-1 rifle, a handgun, and 3,000 rounds of ammunition in his car,” according to the House Select Committee. In interesting parallels with Oswald in Dallas, Vallee had recently taken a job in a warehouse overlooking JFK’s Chicago motorcade route, had movedinto a YMCA in the fall of 1963 around the same time as Oswald, and had contact with a CIA-supported anti-Castro Cuban exile group, as had Oswald earlier in 1963.
    For the attempt to kill JFK in Tampa on November 18, 1963, there were even more parallels between Oswald and Gilberto Lopez, a young man living there at the time. On the day of JFK’s Tampa motorcade, Lopez was working not far from the motorcade route. Oswald and Lopez were about the same age and had the same general physical description. (The description of a suspect issued in Tampa prior to the attempt to kill JFK in that city fits Oswald—and Lopez—much better than the initial description issued by the police in Dallas after JFK was shot.) In all, government files and sources show there were nineteen parallels between the two men, including having highly unusual ties to the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, getting into fistfights over seeming pro-Castro sympathies, making an unusual trip to Mexico City to try to get into Cuba, not owning a car or even being able to drive, and moving to a new city and leaving a wife at the same time, just a few months before JFK’s assassination. After the attempt to kill JFK in Tampa was called off and JFK successfully completed his motorcade, Lopez left Trafficante’s home base and reportedly went to Dallas, which was in Marcello’s territory. Lopez would be secretly investigated for JFK’s murder by both the FBI and the CIA, and their reports on Lopez were provided to Naval Intelligence.
    Had JFK been killed on November 2, 1963, in Chicago (home of Rosselli’s mob family) or in Trafficante’s base of Tampa on November 18, 1963, someone remarkably like Oswald was apparently positioned to “take the fall” in either of those cities, just like Oswald in Dallas. The conspirators had only one basic plan: to shoot JFK in an open motorcade, a plan that could be applied in all three cities. Asidefrom someone to take the blame, the other personnel were mostly the same, regardless of which city would be the scene of the assassination. (For example, Jack Ruby—part of Marcello’s organization in Dallas—had well-documented ties to his hometown of Chicago, where he received a large payoff shortly before the attempt to kill JFK there, and also to Tampa).
    Oswald has been a mystery to many on all sides of the JFK assassination controversy, but when looked at through the lens of Carlos Marcello and his associates—and that of US intelligence—his documented actions as they unfold in this book finally make sense. The only viable explanation for why Oswald worked for strident anti-Castro anti-Communists like Banister and Ferrie and was friends with anti-Communist George DeMohrenschildt is that he was an anti-Communist US intelligence asset. (Many liberals in the early 1960s, including JFK, were anti-Communist, so such a role didn’t require Oswald to be as ultraconservative as Banister and Ferrie.) In that role, he was one of several US intelligence assets sent to the Soviet Union to come back to America with a Russian wife. When the KGB failed to take the bait in the US, Oswald soon began focusing on an upcoming anti-Castro Cuban operation for Naval Intelligence