From: abw@natchez.bu.edu (Al Wesolowsky)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy.jfk
Subject: Weberman & Canfield on the tramps (300 lines)
Date: 27 Jul 92 21:17:41 GMT
Organization: Boston University

"Robert E Daniels"  <REDANLS@unc.bitnet>
robert.daniels@lambada.oit.unc.edu
asked me to post the following. 

Please, folks, let's keep this in alt.conspiracy.jfk and not rile the
folks over in sci.skeptic or alt.conspiracy with excessive crossposting.
Okay? Okay. Here we go....

      The following passage has been scanned from pages 347-353 of COUP
      D'ETAT IN AMERICA: THE CIA AND THE ASSASSINATION OF JOHN F. KENNEDY
      by Alan J. Weberman and Michael Canfield (1992, Revised edition)
      and is posted here on alt.conspiracy.jfk with the permission of the
      publisher, Quick American Archives (510 533 0605, 1 800 428 7825)

      *...* indicates italics     _..._ indicates underlined italics

      //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

      The Tramp Tramps

        The latest development in the story of the tramps occurred as a
      spinoff of the release of Oliver Stone's movie JFK. The film had
      enough influence on public opinion to cause the Dallas City Council
      to open the Dallas Police Department's files on the Kennedy
      assassination to the public. As a result of this release, records
      of three tramps picked up in the railroad yards shortly after the
      assassination were discovered.
        Let us examine these documents, beginning with "Gus W. Abrams",
      the oldest of the three tramps (age 53).
        "Mr. Abrams" was arrested on November 22, 1963 at 4:00 p.m. in
      the Texas and Pacific railroad yards at Elm and Houston in Dallas.
      He was charged with vagrancy and possible robbery: "These men were
      taken off a train boxcar in the railroad yards right after
      President Kennedy was shot. These men are passing through town.
      They have no jobs or any means of making a living." The arresting
      officer was W.E. Chambers and Officer Ernest Beck released them on
      November 26, 1963, four days later. Missing from the form was a
      home address, I.D. number, arrest number and thumbprint.
        "John Forrester Gedney" was the next tramp, age 38. Aside from
      the different name and date of birth it was identical to that of
      "Gus Abrams".
        The last arrest record was on "Harold Doyle", age 30, presumably
      the Sturgis tramp (he looked youngest). It was identical to the
      other two except in its description of the details of the arrest:
      "These men were seen getting on a boxcar on a train right after
      President Kennedy was shot. These men are all passing through, they
      have no jobs..."
        Assuming these men were "the tramps", since Mr Abrams was the
      oldest, one would presume he was the Hunt tramp. Mr. Doyle is the
      youngest of the three so he must be the Sturgis tramp, since the
      Sturgis tramp looks the youngest. Finally, by the process of
      elimination, Mr. Gedney must be the Carswell tramp.
        I called the policeman who questioned these tramps, William E.
      Chambers, "You mean all that stuff in the news? They got that
      wrong. My name is on the document but it is wrong, I never
      questioned them. I might have seen them, I don't remember. I signed
      the reports but there was some mistake. You're not going to put
      this in your book...l don't like discussing this with strangers."
        I then called retired Dallas Police Officer Ernest Beck and asked
      him if he had released them, "I don't know, I don't know. I don't
      remember anything about that time...it was so long ago. I don't
      remember any tramps." I said, "Mr Beck, it is really important for
      America to find this stuff out. You don't remember releasing any
      tramps who had been picked up in the railroad yards right after the
      assassination ?" "No! "
        Michael Canfield went down to Dallas and questioned Officer Beck
      in person. After three days of stonewalling, Officer Beck suddenly
      invited Canfield to his house. Two current Dallas Police Officers
      had visited Beck earlier, with copies of the arrest records of
      Doyle, Gedney and Abrams, and apparently had briefed Beck on what
      to say. He said he had no recollection of the arrest of the tramps,
      or of having released them. Earlier, when he had said on the
      telephone that he had seen the arrest records (after the police had
      shown them to him) Canfield asked if he had indeed signed the
      release of the tramps, and Beck said that it was his handwriting.
      When Canfield asked if Beck would testify to that in a court of
      law, Beck screamed, "I ain't testifying to nothing!" and hung up.
      The next day Beck changed his attitude and the meeting took place.
        Canfield then called W.E. Chambers, the alleged arresting officer
      on the records, and asked him about the arrest records. At the
      mention of the alleged arrest records, Chambers got uptight,
      yelled, "I don't talk about that!" and hung up. Canfield then went
      to W.E. Chambers's house. He rang the bell. No answer. He called
      again. No answer. He knew Chambers was home because his car was
      parked in the driveway. Canfield waited three days but Chambers
      would not come out. He was probably hiding under his bed, afraid to
      get mixed-up in an event like the Kennedy assassination. If there
      was no problem with those arrest records, there should be no
      problem answering questions about them. If the situations were
      reversed and the police were asking the questions, this sort of
      behavior would seem very suspicious.
        The next day Canfield went over to the Dallas City Archives and
      checked the arrest records there. Not only did he find the above
      mentioned  three, but he found two more. John Francis Elrod was
      picked up walking along the railroad tracks and Daniel Wayne
      Douglas was picked up near the scene of the Tippett shooting. Both
      were released on November 26, 1963. Beck had released Douglas and
      probably also released Elrod. These arrest reports are identical to
      those of the "tramps" and do not have photos, prints etc.
        Next stop was every courthouse in Dallas (Felony, Misdemeanor,
      Traffic, Divorce, Civil etc.) to check the docket books for
      November 22, 1963 and see if any of these four showed up. Nothing.
      The jailhouse was next. No record. The arrest reports were the only
      traces on these men.
        Where these men *the* Tramps'? Judging from the arrest records
      they were not. Instead, they were different tramps who happened to
      be picked up that day.
        First of all. my early research on references to the tramps by
      the Warren Commission (see page 5) indicates that the men we are
      interested  in were in a freight train that had been searched by
      Police shortly  after the assassination. When the Police were
      unable to find anyone aboard it they let it leave the railroad
      yards behind the TSBD. When sharp eyed railroad man Lee Bowers saw
      one of the tramps going from the boxcar to the gondola car as the
      train was pulling out, he had the train brought back into the yards
      and searched again. It was at this point the tramps were unearthed
      by Police officers Roy Vaughn (who is now Police Chief of
      Midlothian, Texas) and D.V. Harkness. They were turned over to
      Officers Bass and Wise and were marched through Dealy Plaza.
        The tramps in the arrest reports were seen "getting on a boxcar
      on a train right after the assassination." Just as they got on they
      were "taken off a train boxcar in the railroad yards right after
      President Kennedy was shot."
        These are different tramps that were picked up before Hunt,
      Sturgis and Carswell were found. The fact that their arrest records
      contained so little information was not significant. The arrest
      records of Douglas and Elrod contained the same lack of
      information. The reason there are no court records for any of the
      four is simple. The Dallas Police, unconcerned about due process,
      threw these guys in the cooler for several days then released them.
        After the Dallas papers carried the story that the tramps had
      been held for four days one of the policemen who had arrested them
      in the railroad yard, D.V. Harkness, appeared on local television
      to say that the men he arrested were released immediately and that
      these tramps were not them.
        About two weeks after the story of the tramp records in the
      Dallas Police files broke, the couple who had written the story,
      Mary and Ray Fontaine, located Harold Doyle. They sold the story to
      the tabloid-style TV Show. "A Current Affair." The show did a piece
      on Doyle on February 25, 1992 which purported to prove that Doyle
      was the Carswell tramp.
        The program began: "Conspiracy experts have claimed the hobos,
      all of them who appear to be unusually well dressed, might have
      been with the CIA and part of a high reaching assassination
      conspiracy. Others have claimed that the hobos were Watergate
      burglars E.Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis...even Oliver Stone's
      movie JFK suggests the mystery hobos had something to do with the
      President's death...Only yesterday Dallas Police told Current
      Affair that the hobos were detained for a few hours and finding
      them now is highly unlikely."
        The program went on to say that the LaFontaines traced Doyle down
      from his arrest record in which he listed Red Jacket, West
      Virginia, as his home. "From here (a small town flashes on the
      screen, presumably Red Jacket. West Virginia but no title appears)
      the LaFontaines traced his whereabouts to Amarillo, Texas and
      though long gone, neighbors still remember Doyle talking about his
      arrest on November 22, 1963."
        Cut to Kay Lyon, former neighbor of Doyle -- "Well, he told me he
      was in jail for two or three days and during that time he had been
      fingerprinted and questioned. He showed me a photograph of him when
      he was arrested after they got off the train and you know he was
      not proud of it but he didn't mind showing it to anybody."
        From Amarillo the LaFontaines tracked Doyle to Klamath Falls.
      Oregon where he was found working in a pool hall and living in a
      small apartment. Here is Harold's story:
        "The only thing I want to say about it, we had nothing to do with
      it, I can say it. I am telling you the God's and honest truth. We
      had nothing  to do with it. We was (sic) booked and I went in front
      of the Judge and got six days for vagrancy and turned loose. That
      morning we went over to the railroad yards. We was (sic) going to
      Fort Worth and I seen (sic) a guy in the railroad...before we went
      to the railroad yards, sirens and everything was going on and all
      and we asked somebody what happened and they said the Presidents
      been shot. Then all at once someone said, 'Don't make a move.' We
      looked up the end we were sitting in and the far end down the side
      we were surrounded by policemen with guns drawn and they said,
      'Don't make a move.' Because they got us out of the boxcar took us
      through the park...all the people was a hollering, was a going on
      and the sirens were going and people were taking pictures of us and
      people were hollering, 'Are they the ones that done it?'..they took
      us into the jail. They took us up and interrogated us. Kept us till
      they caught Oswald. He was right across the desk from us and the
      man that was with us said, 'You boys are sure lucky. You see the
      guy that killed the President in person."'
        What really happened was that Doyle had been arrested the day of
      the assassination in the railroad yards along with two other men.
      This was a big event in his life, his one minute of fame. But he
      had to embellish upon this story by adding that he was one of the
      mysterious tramps who was photographed while being marched through
      Dealy Plaza. This part of his story was not true.
        First of all, Doyle claims to be the Carswell tramp. If he was
      the youngest of the three tramps he should be the Sturgis tramp.
      Secondly, he does not look like the tramp by any stretch of the
      imagination.  Doyle has learned to make his mouth look a little
      like that of Carswell, but that is where the resemblance ends. We
      have reprinted a photograph of Doyle on page 363 so you can judge
      for yourself. Current Affair should have asked Doyle for a
      photograph of himself from around 1963 since thirty years have
      elapsed since the assassination.
        Secondly, by his own admission, Doyle was arrested immediately
      after the assassination -- "before we went to the railroad yards,
      sirens and everything was going on...then all at once someone said
      don't make a move." Doyle was pulled off the freight before it
      pulled out, not after. Then Doyle claims he was taken from a box
      car. Harkness and Vaughn claim they found the tramps in a gondola
      car. The tramp that Lee Bowers spotted must have been "jumping from
      the ninth boxcar from the front engine" and heading for an open
      gondola car.
         Thirdly, all that Kay Lyon testified to was that she heard Doyle
      say he was arrested that day (which was true) and that he was one
      of the tramps whose photographs were widely circulated. (not true)
      Kay Lyon is not a photoanalyst nor does she possess any first hand
      knowledge of anything regarding the Kennedy assassination. She is
      reporting just hearsay based on Doyle's self serving statements.
      Doyle also told her he was fingerprinted. He was not.
         Fourthly, Doyle says he was brought before a Judge and held for
      six days. He was not brought before a Judge and the arrest records
      indicate he was held for four days. Finally, the Dallas Police told
      "A Current Affair" that the tramps they were interested in had been
      released immediately atter the assassination.
         "A Current Affair" ended with Vincent T. Bugliosi, a former
      Deputy District Attorney from Los Angeles, County, famous for his
      role in the Charles Manson case, saying that "Finding the hobos can
      finally lay to rest irresponsible theories of conspiracy about
      them". Bugliosi is now at work on a book about the Kennedy
      assassination which supports the conclusions of the Warren
      Commission.
        About one week after the "A Current Affair" program aired the
      following  article appeared in the New York Daily News:

           "JFK TRAMPS, FBI SAYS, WERE JUST VAGRANTS  Washington
           - Nearly 29 years after the assassination of President
           John Kennedy, the FBI has finally tracked down the
           mysterious "three tramps" arrested that day in Dallas
           - and concluded that they were just tramps. The FBI's
           Dallas office said it traced the tramps after their
           names were printed in Texas newspapers...One tramp.
           Gus Abrams, is dead, the FBI said, but agents found
           and interviewed John Forrest Gedney in Melbourne,
           Florida and Harold Doyle in Klamath Falls, Oregon. The
           said they were at a mission the day of the
           assassination "had gotten some food and had gotten
           cleaned up and _were wandering  back toward the
           railroad yard_" when they were arrested, said _Oliver
           Revell_, head of the Dallas FBI office. Some theorists
           postulated that the tramps were future Watergate
           burglars E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis."

        There was no photograph of Gedney included with the article so we
      can not compare him to the tramp. However I am sure the FBI must
      have checked the identities of Doyle and Gedney out so we know that
      these are there real names. Gedney's story, like Doyle's,
      contradicts Warren Commission testimony. The SAC of the Dallas
      Office who conducted this investigation had close ties to the
      Central Intelligence Agency when he served as the head of the FBI
      Counterterrorism Unit. He also has close ties to the Iran/Contra
      scandal.
        Michael Canfield is not surprised at the intricate disinformation
      the CIA has come up with this time. "The CIA has a building with
      300 people called the Department of Disinformation and all the
      folks there do is sit around and make up lies. When you call them,
      you ask the CIA switchboard operator for "Disinformation, please."
      They make up all sorts of false stories, facts and tabloid articles
      to float in the U.S. and foreign press to elicit various responses
      from governments and the unsuspecting public. They must have been
      burning the midnight oil preparing all sorts of fanciful fiction.
      They knew the release of Oliver Stone film would cause a rush of
      activity in certain areas.
        We in the journalistic world must be aware that not every
      supposed scoop that comes down the line is what it seems to be.
      Every fact must be checked and rechecked. We have tried to check
      every fact and invite you the reader and you the
      researcher/reporter to do the same. This is the only way we are
      going to get the truth on these matters.  In the words of the
      prophet: "Keep pressing on."
        Have the tramps been laid to rest by the FBI along with the
      truth? It is up to you to decide.
        As I write these words Canfield is on his way to Klamath Falls,
      Oregon to speak with Doyle. Then he is headed for Melbourne,
      Florida to interview Gedney.
        We will keep you updated on the progress of our investigation
      right up until we go press and in subsequent printings with news
      flashes.

      //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

      Robert Daniels

-- 
Al B. Wesolowsky         abw@bucrsb.bu.edu      Chresmology
Boston University      arc9arn@buacca.bu.edu   (cheap rates)