Echoes of Distant Shadows

Echoes of Distant Shadows

by Gary Clifton

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2022 Gary Clifton

Published by Mannison Press, LLC at Smashwords

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Contents

Preface

Chapter 1 Fire in the Hole

Chapter 2 Better Times Gotta Be Comin'

Chapter 3 The Morgue: No Place to Take Your Bestie

Chapter 4 The Russians Are Coming…Well, Maybe

Chapter 5 Detour on Route to See the Rose

Chapter 6 Human Garbage Dumps

Chapter 7 Old-time Days not to Be Forgotten

Chapter 8 Poison: People Are Just Dying to Try Some

Chapter 9 Another Form of Toeing the Mark, but why a Mark Anyway?

Chapter 10 The Coyote and the Fox

Chapter 11 Boomer and Friends

Chapter 12 History Lesson

Chapter 13 Details: It's What's for Dinner

Chapter 14 What You See Ain't Always What You See

Chapter 15 Target Practice: Indispensable in the Assassination Business

Chapter 16 Boomer Rang

Chapter 17 Nobody Lives Forever

Chapter 18 A Beautiful Sunday Morning: A Fine Time to Visit the Golf Course and the Pool

Chapter 19 In the End It's Easy, So Some Expert Said

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Gary Clifton

Preface

The motorcade slowly snaked between caverns of aluminum, steel, and glass, squeezing past sidewalks thronged with wildly enthusiastic crowds, clapping, cheering. Turning west from Houston Street onto Elm, the creeping line of vehicles slowed even more. Spectator density thinned, but excitement did not. It was a beautiful, sun-blessed, north Texas November afternoon.

Dallas. Big D. At that time—November 1963—the very thought of it spurred visions of marvels of air-conditioned architecture, of suntanned blondes stranded in BMWs on the Central Expressway. America's team, the Dallas Cowboys, was the darling of the rapidly expanding NFL. The image was nearly indelible: in the midst of such all-American opulence, with church and family literally ringing from the skyscrapers, nothing could possibly go wrong.

On the northwest corner of Elm and Houston Streets on the edge of downtown stood an old, six-story building, the words Dallas School Book Depository displayed over the front door. The Hertz billboard mounted on the roof was visible for miles. A small park between the Depository and Elm Street and the grassy area across Elm to the south was known as Dealey Plaza.

Hunched in a fifth-floor window, a bitter, dysfunctional little man waited. A semi-literate, ill-tempered malcontent, he'd wrangled his way into the Soviet Union at a time in history where no admittance was the strict policy. Always the misfit, he proved there to be an even greater failure. He was shuttled—only possible with KGB approval and assistance—back to the U.S. with his attractive, university educated wife. Once back in the U.S., he'd attempted to assassinate General Edwin Walker, politically a right-winger, five weeks prior to this monumental day. Not surprisingly, he'd missed.

A very well-used, twelve-dollar mail-order Mannlicher - Carcano 6.5 millimeter rifle at the ready, he hunched in wait. This time he'd take a shot at someone he regarded as a hardline lefty, although actually discerning the ideological complexities might have been beyond him. It was the act, the burning need for recognition, that drove him, with little real concern for the political inclination of the victim. The U.S. Marine Corps and some of the many schools he'd attended had diagnosed this troubled, self-absorbed misfit with delusions of grandeur and serious anger issues. The Marines had taught him to shoot, and he'd already failed once. This time he did not intend to miss.

A marked Dallas Police car led the Presidential motorcade past the School Book Depository. A stretch limo, open topped and glistening black, followed the hard left turn west onto Elm for access to the Stemmons Freeway and towards what was to be a campaign speech and luncheon at the massive Dallas Market Hall. President John F. Kennedy, vibrant, dynamic, rode in the rear seat of the black limo, his glamorous wife Jacqueline beside him. Texas Governor John Connally and his wife Nellie sat on the fold-out jump seats between the Kennedys and the pair of Secret Service Agents in the front seat.

Riding in the second limo beside her husband, Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson, Lady Bird Johnson, the so-called second lady, spotted the foot-tall white letters above the School Book Depository front door. Misreading the name, she remarked to herself, What the hell is a School Book Repository? a confused question few could answer to this day.

As the procession straightened onto Elm, Governor Connally turned back and in the face of huge, adoring crowds clogging the streets, said, Well, Mr. President, you certainly can't say they don't love you in Dallas.

Kennedy had just replied, No, you can't, as the motorcade slowly passed below the crouching little man at a fifth-floor window of the Depository. Nearly at a standstill, the turning target drifted slowly left into the crosshairs of the assassin's cheap scope. First shot—a direct hit to the back of the neck. But the target remained upright. The gunman couldn't have known the wounded man was held erect by a constrictive back brace. Crank the bolt, re-acquire the target, quickly send a second shot—Maggie's Drawers, Marine lingo for a miss. Eject and relocate again in two seconds and squeeze a third time. The head exploded in a pink, mushy spew. The average shooter, the nobody, the underdog, the angry failure, had bridged the gap—that elusive chasm into the just and proper recognition which should have been his long ago. He had delivered a blow for something, but had he survived, defining that something would have remained well out of his reach.

Dallas motorcycle officer Marion Baker instantly recognized the sound of rifle fire over the noise of the motorcade and his roaring Harley. He dumped the big machine on the Dealey Plaza grassy knoll in front of the building and stormed in the front door, pistol drawn.

A man appeared from a small office. I'm the School Book Depository manager, he stammered, looking down Baker's gun barrel.

Somebody's shooting at the Presidential motorcade from this building. Help me identify any strangers.

The little man from the fifth floor had abandoned his rifle and was making his escape. Running headlong into Baker on the stairs, he froze. It's okay, the manager said. He's an employee—name's Lee Oswald.

Baker continued up the stairs and the non-person soon to become infamous returned to his rented room in Oak Cliff. He retrieved his mail-order .38 revolver from his hovel on North Beckley and ran on foot, to he knew not where—fleeing in headlong blind panic. The remainder of Lee Harvey Oswald's freedom was now measured in minutes, his life in hours.

Within thirty minutes after Oswald had pulled the trigger, Parkland Hospital doctors pronounced John F. Kennedy dead and in less than an hour, the Dallas Police radio system blared that Lee Harvey Oswald was wanted for questioning. In full view of several witnesses, Oswald shot and killed uniformed Dallas Police Officer J.D. Tippet, fled to the nearby Texas Theatre, and was captured by a swarm of Dallas cops.

LBJ was sworn in as President on Air Force One. Oswald was assassinated by Jack Ruby in the basement garage of Dallas Police Headquarters two days later. Years of theories, conspiracy theories, and theories of theories rippled across the world like an unending nuclear explosion. The idea that one insignificant misfit could kill the young, vibrant, powerful President was a scenario many could not, then or now, get their minds around. It just had to be a conspiracy and Oswald's recent Soviet residency sloshed kerosene on the fiery, uncontrollable rumors stemming from unavoidable, ominous overtones.

B ut that any competent espionage operation would use a loose cannon like Oswald as an acceptable asset, or even as an expendable patsy, defies credibility. The spy business requires stealth and intelligence, qualities absent from Oswald's world. He couldn't write a cogent sentence or hold a menial job. Massive investigations developed tantalizing, but unverified information hinting the Soviets may have intended to eventually use Oswald and his pretty wife as tools of the motherland—sleepers if you would. Later developments in the 1990s would add fuel to that flame. Oswald's unspeakable act made short work of any Soviet plan. All so often, conspiracy theorists have ignored Oswald's history of inept, grievance-laden, impulsive stumbling, tying him instead to surreptitious meetings with co-conspirators, mysterious Cubans, or faceless plotters. Smart money was on the plan of the real enemy of the era: the Soviet Union.

Spying is a slippery, deadly activity. Rumors drifted from inside the JFK investigation that the Soviets had used Oswald as a blocking back—a priceless opportunity to slip operatives into the U.S. unnoticed in the fervor following his clumsy murder of JFK. But little empirical evidence beyond suspicion evolved at the time. Those rumors gradually dissipated in the much larger haze of secrecy and intrigue. In more recent years, the FBI has arrested a ring of Russians operating as quiet American families in Boston, Yonkers, Virginia, and New Jersey. Their mission has never been fully determined, but their presence clearly stated that when the Wall fell and the whistle blew, it was only halftime. Were Oswald and wife an early part of this intrusion? Why else would the KGB allow the Oswalds escape at a time when exiting was an even more formidable task than entering the locked-tight Soviet Union?

Do silent invaders move among us today? Are any of the thousand conspiracy theories generated by the assassination remotely true? Top secret documents, long hidden by the government, have been released periodically, including in late 2021. The many words say little beyond the endless verbose internal double talk of allegedly secret bureaucrat speak.

Truth is an elusive term, often affected by the lack of common ground and the complexities of human opinion, including those of the glut of U.S. Intelligence agencies. Not unlike religion, truth can be influenced by the prevailing belief of the majority. The existence of enemies is a given, but the subtleties of truth can easily be distorted or lost in conjecture. The sleeper spies in Yonkers and New Jersey, detected long after the JFK disaster and the era depicted herein, were real. Perhaps they intended to infiltrate the local school board, or even the FBI? Perhaps they contemplated violent mayhem? Is it conceivable to deny that one might be working at the next desk or is the friendly clerk in the local convenience store? Spy tradecraft, like the conspiracy concepts that continue to this day, remain at the veiled fringe of uncertainty.

The author was many years a federal officer in Dallas (Special Agent, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives), time spent constantly digging in the vast criminal underbelly of a sprawling metroplex, including criminals of all levels of affluence and education. Procedure included a heavy dose of bombings, arsons, homicides, killers for hire, and yes, frequent assignments to Secret Service protective details from Presidents to political candidates long forgotten. Combined with daily contact with local law enforcement who, despite the efforts of Hoover's FBI and the vast blank wall of the U.S. intelligence bloc to ensure the information spigot was closed, could not avoid compiling volumes of information. Unrelated investigations unavoidably and regularly encountered many citizens who had been touched by the Warren Commission's enormous dragnet. No claim here is made of expertise in the JFK tragedy.

But the quantity of information acquired in twenty years is, to say the least, extensive. That is to say, despite the observation here that Oswald, acting alone, murdered a President of the United States, this opinion is certainly not etched in the granite stone of omniscience. Conspiracy theories stretch along the tenuous path from ludicrous to sober and thought-provoking. Time, the enemy of such inquiries, has even further blurred the lines.

What follows is a fictionalized version of a situation that developed in 1987. Although murders were solved here and facts were investigated as best as possible in the circus atmosphere that surrounds the JFK tragedy, many complex, baffling events remain mired in the viscous realities of history. That any future solid facts can rationally evolve beyond that is a monumental proposition which will probably never clear the minefield of controversy which remain only as echoes of distant shadows.

Chapter 1

Fire in the Hole

Just before nine p.m., we'd finally gotten her kid, Tad, to bed. She'd just tossed the skimpy shorts and bikini top in the corner and turned toward me.

My latest squeeze, Anne, an electrical engineer for a major aerospace contractor, earned twice as much as me and was three times smarter. Although we maintained separate apartments across