JAMES DiEUGENIO SAID:
Rare: Sylvia Meagher Interview [below]....
I have never heard an interview with her before. So I think this will be the first time you hear her voice.
Interesting how she takes no prisoners about the WC.
Near the end, did Marina lie about the license plate to cover up Lee's informant status?
Do any [of] our Paine experts have an opinion on her clear implication that Marina could not have recorded the Hosty info in Oswald's notebook?
If not, then it was either Oswald or Ruth Paine, correct?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
I think the answer to the "license plate" controversy/mystery is a very simple one --- Marina Oswald simply walked out to the curb where James Hosty's car was parked and looked at the license plate. She then wrote down the number and later gave it to her husband, Lee. Lee then wrote the license number in his address book [see Commission Exhibit No. 18].
And the scenario I just laid out above is also exactly what Vincent Bugliosi asserts in his 2007 book, "Reclaiming History". Let's have a look at what Bugliosi wrote....
[Quote On:]
"The next day, Tuesday [November 5, 1963], Jim Hosty made another trip to Fort Worth. Since his route took him past Irving and Ruth had told him she would try to get Lee's address in Dallas for him, he decided to stop by to see if she had done so. His partner, Agent Gary S. Wilson, went up to the door with him, and Hosty spoke with Ruth on the doorstep for a few minutes. She had not asked Lee for his address in Dallas, but she had given him Hosty's telephone number and thought he would call.
Ruth mentioned the fact that Lee had told her that weekend that he was a Trotskyite Communist. She found what Lee told her more amusing than anything else, and told Hosty Lee was "an illogical person." Hosty wondered to Ruth whether Lee had mental problems. Ruth responded that she did not understand the thinking of anyone who espoused Marxism, but that was far different from a judgment that Lee was unstable or unable to function in a normal society.
The interview at the front door lasted only a few minutes, and Hosty and Ruth recalled Marina appearing briefly just as the agents were leaving. She had actually been outside while Hosty was talking to Ruth, memorizing the license plate number of Hosty's official FBI car and walking around the car several times to see if she could determine the car's make, which she could not. The two women watched from the front window as the FBI agents drove away from the curb, made a U-turn, and went back the way they had come, heading for the highway to Fort Worth.
Then Marina, in accordance with Lee's instructions and still without Ruth's knowledge, wrote the license plate number down on a piece of paper. Either
she got one number wrong or Lee copied it wrong into his address book, where
it was found, written in his hand, after the assassination." -- Vincent Bugliosi; Page 777 of "Reclaiming History"
[End Quote.]
Mr. Bugliosi utilized several different sources for the above book excerpts. Here's a complete list of those sources (with links included, where available, plus additional comments made by Bugliosi within two of the source notes):
.... 1 H 48, WCT Marina N. Oswald;
.... 3 H 99, WCT Ruth Hyde Paine;
.... Hosty with Hosty, Assignment: Oswald, p.51 (in Hosty’s testimony before the Warren Commission [4 H 453] he said he didn’t see Marina);
.... McMillan, Marina and Lee, p.498;
.... 9 H 398–400, WCT Ruth Hyde Paine;
.... License plate in address book: CE 18, 16 H 64 (the entry is a few spaces below the date, November 1, and name James P. Hosty; Ruth told Oswald on November 1 about Hosty’s visit earlier in the day; the license number almost assuredly would have been put into his address book after Hosty’s second visit on November 5, when Marina got it for Lee);
.... One digit off on license plate number: 5 H 112, WCT J. Edgar Hoover.
Addendum....
Despite the fact I disagree very strongly with virtually everything Sylvia Meagher said in the January 1967 interview presented above, I still enjoyed listening to the interview very much. It seems quite obvious to me when listening to her speak that Sylvia was a very intelligent and articulate lady. I think she was 100% wrong when she said that the 888-page Warren Commission Report "is a false document", but I still respect Sylvia's savvy and her communication skills (based on this one interview from 1967).
In my opinion, one fairly big mistake that Meagher makes when talking about Lee Harvey Oswald's supposed "Coke alibi" is that Sylvia seems to totally ignore the fact that during the Warren Commission's re-enactment of Oswald's alleged movements just after the assassination (which culminated in Oswald being confronted by Dallas policeman Marrion L. Baker in the Book Depository's lunchroom on the second floor approximately 90 seconds after President Kennedy was shot), the Secret Service agent who performed the re-creation (John Howlett) was only moving at two different "walking" speeds when travelling from the sixth-floor Sniper's Nest to the second-floor lunchroom [Warren Report, Page 152].
Oswald, therefore, could very easily have shaved many seconds off of Howlett's fastest re-enactment time of 74 seconds if he (Oswald) had been moving faster than just the "normal walking pace" or the "fast walk" that were employed by Special Agent Howlett during the re-creations of the event.
I think it's quite logical to believe that Oswald was, indeed, very likely moving quite a bit faster than Howlett was moving when Oswald left the Sniper's Nest and headed downstairs on 11/22/63. But judging by the words we hear spoken by Sylvia Meagher in her 1967 radio interview, Mrs. Meagher doesn't seem to allow for even the possibility that Oswald could have arrived in the second-floor lunchroom ANY faster than Agent Howlett's quickest re-created time, which was 1 minute and 14 seconds. [More here.]
Plus, Meagher doesn't allow for other possibilities with respect to the crossed-out "Drinking a Coke" reference found in Marrion Baker's 9/23/64 signed statement. More discussion about "The Coke" can be found in this article.
David Von Pein
September 12, 2017
