One of the obvious tactics in advancing the narrative of Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone gunman in the murder of President Kennedy is how innocent and quaint everyone and everything appears to support that narrative: the entire persona of Ruth Paine, for example — a stranger who literally inserted herself into the life of the Oswalds — just happened to randomly call the Texas School Book Depository trying to get Lee a job out of the kindness of her Quaker heart.
Another is Johnny Brewer of Hardy’s Shoe Store following Oswald into the Texas Theatre and demanding the police be called because he didn’t pay for a ticket, all because Brewer just happened to find Oswald suspicious.
A third example is Jack Ruby just happening to kill Oswald so Jackie wouldn’t have to testify at Oswald’s trial.
Of course, the conclusion of the Warren Report and the refusal to consider anything beyond that conclusion is akin to an ostrich effect on actual reality.
These all seem like excuses for darker behavior than legitimate reasons to be taken at face value. It’s a motif that evokes the fake facade of a building put up to appear like the real building to hide all of the construction work and equipment behind it.
Now, sticking with the lone gunman narrative, apply this “tactic of mere coincidence” to the purported scene of the crime, a facade in and out itself: the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) building, better known at the time as the Sexton Building, at 411 Elm St. It is a critical element to the assassination plot, which just so happened to be the last building in the motorcade route before the president was breezing towards the Trade Mart. Let us count the ways:
- The TSBD just happened to relocate from the first floor of the Dal-Tex building across the street (501 Elm), where it had been for over ten years, to 411 Elm only a few months before the assassination
- This move just happened to free up the first floor of the Dal-Tex building, a location of strange activity on 11–22–63
- The previous occupants of 411 Elm, the wholesaler grocer Sexton Company, just happened to vacate the building after twenty years in November 1961, during JFK’s first year in office
- The TSBD leased the Sexton building as early as January 1962, but just happened to let it remain vacant for at least 18 months
- The owner of the building just happened to be Col. D.H. Byrd (through D.H. Byrd Enterprises), who just happened to be a founder of the Civil Air Patrol
- Byrd just happened to be Chairman of the CAP National Executive Board in 1959–1960 at the same time David Ferrie was aide to CAP’s National Commander, General McElroy
- David Ferrie just happened to be Lee Oswald’s cadet instructor in 1955
- Byrd just happened to be out of the country on safari in Portuguese Mozambique with German Werner von Alvensleben at the time of the assassination
- Oswald just happened to start work as an “order filler” at TSBD five weeks before the president’s trip to Dallas
- The TSBD phones just happened to go dead as the motorcade approached
- The TSBD lights just happened to go off as the motorcade approached
- The TSBD elevators just happened not to function when Officer Baker and Supervisor Truly summoned them moments after the shots
- The stairs to the upper floors just happened to be off-limits other than for those permitted access
- Crewmen just happened to be laying flooring on the sixth floor that week — the crucial locale of the “sniper’s nest” — the week and day of the assassination
- The presidential motorcade just happened to be diverted so that it would make a ridiculously wide turn onto Elm just in front of the building, slowing it down considerably as it sloped toward the triple underpass
- A rifle, a sniper’s nest, and three neatly placed cartridges just happened to be found with little to no difficulty on the sixth floor
Anything that did not play into the lone-sniper-from-the-TSBD-sixth-floor theme was dismissed: whether it be witnesses in the building or in the plaza who saw or heard otherwise; testimony from Parkland doctors; limousine evidence; autopsy evidence; advanced knowledge of the hit provided by informant Willie Somersett, etc.
The only thing that mattered was that the murder must — and could only have been accomplished — from that building, on that floor, from that window, by that man.
The whole narrative of Lee Harvey Oswald as the sole killer of the president firing from the sixth floor window, therefore, rests on the critical role of the building itself.
William Weston advanced provocative research about the Book Depository in articles for The Fourth Decade (“411 Elm,” May 1994) and Dealey Plaza Echo (“The Spider’s Web: The Texas School Book Depository and the Dallas Conspiracy,” March 2006). Weston quotes journalist Elzie Glaze, who said of the building:
“There is a very large spider guarding this web of secrecy. I have entered other webs, but this one is different because the spider leaves the web and stalks its prey — sometimes for many years.”
More recently, Richard James De Socio in Clash of Dynasties argued a Rockefeller connection to the TSBD. We will return to the potential Rockefeller link later.
Gary Hill devoted a chapter in his new book, The Wizard of Ozwald, called “The Other Schoolbook Depository,” wherein Hill writes of not only the TSBD, but the Lone Star Schoolbook Depository. Both were along the presidential motorcade. “Both warehouses were owned by right-wing radicals,” Hill writes.
As I wrote in my book on the assassination The Mad Bishops:
“What exactly did the Texas School Book Depository company do? Until his death in 1927, the proprietor was Hugh Perry. By the time he relocated his retail book business, the Hugh Perry Book Depository, from Sherman in northern Texas to Dallas in 1903, the company was becoming the premier seller and distributor of school textbooks, with 800 depositories scattered around the state. Indeed, ‘The books which [Perry] handles have been officially adopted by the state of Texas for use in the public schools.’”
In his affidavit to the Warren Commission, TSBD president Jack C. Cason stated:
“The Corporation acts as an independent agency for a group of thirty-three publishers to warehouse and distribute textbooks to the various schools in the states of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, and New Mexico. It has no other business activity other than that aforementioned. It is not connected in any way with any state or municipal government and operates solely as a private Corporation with a Charter from the State of Texas.”
Cason’s affidavit was terse and entirely unhelpful, yet he spent nearly his entire career with the book depository — he was elected president and chairman of the board as far back as 1935. At the time of the assassination he was still president and also treasurer; one of three directors (with O.V. Campbell and Roy S. Truly, who hired Oswald); and was one of two shareholders (with O.V. Campbell). So Cason was certainly in a position to share important details about the workings of the TSBD — Cason, after all, oversaw the move from 501 Elm to 411 Elm.
Hill and Weston both quote from Cason’s widow, Gladys Swope Cason, who wrote a memoir, One Life, A Memoir (2004), which devotes a section on how the aftermath of the assassination changed the family forever, so much so that they had to move residences:
“Never did he become interested in searching for those who assassinated the President, nor did I. We made a pact not to discuss the act or its details.”
Jack C. Cason bought the business in 1947 and changed the name from Hugh Perry to the Texas School Book Depository.
So those invested in the book depository business would have regularly interacted with the state legislature, school districts, publishing companies (which leased office space on the premises), transportation and shipping authorities (shipments came by train at the time), and naturally city and police personnel. According to the FBI, 65 individuals had access to the Book Depository building; the Bureau estimated 73 people were known to be in the building throughout November 22, 1963.
Additionally, the Book Depository was hand in glove with the education policies of the Texas Good Neighbor Commission, a propaganda arm that advanced friendly relations with Mexico — most likely because of the need of migrant workers from Mexico and the many personal and business interests wealthy Texans had in Mexico — and was reflected in state curriculum. Notably, as I wrote in The Mad Bishops, the Good Neighbor commission considered dealing with desegregation but opted to kick it down the road, in line with much of the thinking of Dallasites at the time.
Many figures of suspicion were involved in Good Neighbor outreach efforts, like Sister Cities events and Mexican debutantes visiting Texas. D.H. Byrd often participated in hosting affairs.
The entire Good Neighbor agenda stemmed from the Office of Inter-American Affairs, whose presidential-appointed Coordinator was Nelson Rockefeller.
Moreover, it should be at least noted, that Roy S. Truly moonlit for the North American Aviation plant in Dallas, an entity that until 1938 owned Eastern Air Lines before it was sold to Eddie Rickenbacker of General Motors. David Ferrie, of course, was an Eastern Air pilot in the 1950s during his Civil Air Patrol tenure; Laurance Rockefeller, younger brother to Nelson and David, was a board member from ‘38-’60. Eastern’s offices, furthermore, were located at 10 Rockefeller Plaza.
And here is where the Rockefeller connection comes in, and Jack Cason appears to be the Rockefeller link on the ground: Cason attended the University of Chicago, its founding funded by John D. Rockefeller in 1890. After university Cason managed the Dallas office of the Lyons & Carnahan Publishing Company before becoming president of the book depository (Lyons & Carnahan continued to have office space in the TSBD).
In her oral history interview with the Sixth Floor Museum, Mrs. Cason mentioned accompanying Mr. Cason on business trips to New York, hobnobbing with publishing colleagues at nightclubs, dancing into the night.
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As DeSocio writes in Clash of Dynasties:
“If someone had the wherewithal to enter the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository and flipped open book covers, it would have read Rockefeller Center.”
Was the TSBD, then, a patsy in the same way Lee Oswald claimed to be? How many such stooges were needed in order to pull off the “greatest magic trick ever under the sun”?
After all, “David Rockefeller as intern to the mayor formed the Civil Air Patrol to protect Standard Oil’s vessels,” De Socio writes. The mayor at this time was Fiorello La Guardia. La Guardia was also the first director of the Office of Civilian Defense. Citing David Rockefeller’s autobiography, DeSocio notes Rockefeller interned for La Guardia in the Office of Civilian Defense.
So, we must look again at D.H. Byrd and wonder from whom was he taking orders: his boys from Big D or the Yanks from back east. One need to only look back at the famous South Pole expedition of Byrd’s cousin, Admiral Byrd, and follow the trail of who financed it: D.H. Byrd himself and Junior Rockefeller, father of Nelson, David and Laurance. In gratitude, Byrd named a land formation Rockefeller Plateau and a land formation in Antarctica after D.H.
And, finally, it just happened that when Byrd bought the 411 Elm St. building in 1936 it was home to the farm manufacturing company International Harvester. One year earlier, Harold McCormick became International Harvester’s chairman of the board. Though they were then divorced, McCormick’s ex-wife with whom he had five children was Edith Rockefeller, youngest daughter of John D.
The murder of our 35th president was the result of the sins of the fathers damning the fates of their sons.
Or it just happened that way.
