Desperately Seeking Truth

Researching history to find the truth about what REALLY happened is not unlike looking for a specific destination when all one has is its address, while traveling on a highway littered with flashing billboards, each offering diversions and false promises pointing the way to the same destination by a different route. Billboards, like most advertising, lie. I always have to remember my modus operandi--the true route to the destination is to follow the money.

I began my most research into Morris Douglas Jaffe after reading a blog by John Delane Williams, Why is Morris Jaffe Interesting? This phase of my research required me to 

• begin with assumptions Williams had made, compared with facts I uncovered about Jaffe's background. (The Fed Mart allegations)
• My next blog about this research revealed what I thought may have been a significant link between the Jaffe family in San Antonio and Lyndon Johnson's close friend and attorney from the Texas hill country, "Judge Moursund." (Old San Antonio)
• It was the next step in my research that led me to inquire into Jaffe's uranium exploration,  found in a blog post called "Other Uranium Explorers in Texas in the 1950's."

What I knew for sure at that point were the following details:

• Lyndon Johnson's San Antonio friend, Morris Douglas Jaffe, was involved for a time in uranium exploration;
• Another Morris D. Jaffe was a lawyer in Dallas.

My initial goal was to sort the two men out and determine which had a uranium company, what happened to it, and with whom he was connected or, perhaps, who was investing in his company. I also needed to know whether either of the two Morris Jaffes was, as  John Delane Williams alleged, the son-in-law of Sam Bloom, an advertising man who "was enlisted to handle public relations for Judge Joe Brown for the Jack Ruby trial." 

Williams also stated in the same post that 

"Mort Freedman was a brother-in-law to Sam Bloom and the owner operator of Morty Freedman Inc. at 2135 Lamar in Dallas. More importantly, he shared the telephone number with the Dallas Uranium and Oil Company on the third floor of the Dal-Tex Building."

Continuing with my metaphor, I knew what I wanted to know, but I had to follow money maps to reach my destination, while ignoring all the billboards (statements Williams made as truths), attempting to divert me from a successful completion of my journey. It took many twists and turns, and for that reason, I am pinpointing for readers the stops made along the way, intersections as it were with other money trails, that eventually led to the correct path to the discovery of the role uranium played in the plot to kill the Kennedy brothers.

1. In September I decided to look into the background of a Waco attorney named David Copeland, the man behind the mask of William Torbitt and the "Torbitt Document," as well as a major source of information secretly supplied to Penn Jones, Jr., an early researcher in the JFK assassination. Copeland's wife, Jayne Copeland -- daughter and partner of Mrs. Lillie Mae Blain Baker -- was a children's clothing maker who traveled within circles of the fashion and textile industry in Dallas, New Orleans and New York. This was the same industry engaged in by many of the backstage characters in the Kennedy assassination--people like Abraham Zapruder and Jeanne LeGon De Mohrenschildt. Did Copeland learn what he knew through his wife's contacts or from other sources?
2. The Torbitt Document took me back to research I had begun years before but never completed--a fascinating look at a trial of two Mexican assassins arrested by Alice District Attorney Sam Burris in the mistaken killing of the son of a lawyer from south Texas named Jake Floyd. 
3. Researching the background of Sam Burris was a step necessary in determining how close he may have been to a relative named Howard Burris, lurking inside the excellent research of Richard Bartholomew's treasure, Possible Discovery of an Automobile Used In the JFK Conspiracy. 
4. Within Bartholomew's manuscript was revealed a connection between Howard Burris and the notorious Edward G. Lansdale, an Air Force Major General at the time of his retirement on November 1, 1963, who headed Operation Mongoose during the Kennedy years.

Only recently did I discover that Jack Ruby was aware of the book written by J. Evetts Haley before his death of a fast-growing cancer in 1967. Ruby wrote a letter, addressed only to "John," which can be seen at page 104 of a book written by William P. Litynski and uploaded to Scribd:

While Ruby is in jail, he writes this letter:  [image of note] It reads:

"you must believe me that I know what is taking place, so please with all my heart, you must believe me, because I am counting on you to save this country a lot of blood-shed. As soon as you get out you must read Texan looks at Lyndon [A Texan Looks at Lyndon by J. Evetts Haley], and it may open your eyes to a lot of things. This man is a Nazi in the worst order."

Further on in this letter Ruby writes:

... isn't it strange that Oswald who hasn't worked a lick most of his life, should be fortunate enough to get a job at the Book Building two weeks before the president himself didn't know as to when he was to visit Dallas, now where would a jerk like Oswald get the information that the president was coming to Dallas? Only one person could have had that information, and that man was Johnson who knew weeks in advance as to what was going to happen, because he is the one who was going to arrange the trip for the president, this had been planned long before the president himself knew about, so you can figure that one out. The only one who gained by the shooting of the president was Johnson, and he was in a car in the rear and safe when the shooting took place. What would the Russians, Castro or anyone else have to gain by eliminating the president? If Johnson was so heartbroken over Kennedy, why didn't he do something for Robert Kennedy? All he did was snub him.

This letter and Ruby's remarks to the press, suggest that Ruby became only later convinced that Johnson was a power behind the scenes. During his Warren testimony he shows no inkling of this conviction.

Upon investigation, we learn that the above letter was printed in an issue of Ramparts magazine with the following lead-in:

The letter which follows is one of two unsigned letters handwritten in pencil on slips from a memo pad confiscated by one of Ruby's guards and subsequently smuggled from the jail. They were sold at auction in the Astor Gallery in New York on January 31 1966 by Charles Hamilton, a reputable autograph dealer who vouched for their authenticity. The purchaser of this one was Texas editor Penn Jones Jr., author of the book Forgive My Grief. He paid $950. Ruby's younger brother Sam immediately contacted Jones and confirmed that Ruby had admitted writing the letter.

With Jones' permission we are publishing most of the letter (33 pages in its original handwritten form) This is its exclusive publication and it is presented as Ruby wrote it without correcting his errors in spelling, grammar, or punctuation, without attempting to clarify its ambiguities, contradictions, and evident factual errors. It will be remembered that Ruby never went beyond the eighth grade in school.---by David Welsh

The letter can be read as it appeared in Ramparts by looking at the file on Jack Ruby at the Mary Ferrell website. The complete file is 204 pages long. I will be glad to email a pdf of the file to anyone requesting same.