Jesse Curry was born in
1914. After leaving Dallas Technical High School he worked for the
Vitalic Battery Company. He also had his own cleaning and pressing
shop before joining the Dallas police force in 1936. By taking civil
service examinations he was able to gain promotions to a detective,
sergeant, lieutenant of police, captain of police, inspector of police.
He was sent to the FBI National Academy in Washington and in
January, 1960, Curry was appointed as chief of police.
Curry was involved in the
discussions with Kenneth O'Donnell (special
assistant to Kennedy) and Winston G. Lawson
(Secret Service) about the route of that President John
F. Kennedy
was to take on 22nd November,
1963. However, Curry always insisted that it was Lawson who made all
the major decisions.
Curry drove the presidential
motorcade's lead car and took control of the situation after the killing
of Kennedy. The next day Curry told reporters that he could tell by
the sound of the shots that they had come from the Texas School Book
Depository.
Curry was also responsible
for protecting Lee
Harvey Oswald.
However, he later claimed that just before Jack
Ruby
shot Oswald he was "called to take a phone call from Dallas Mayor
Earle Cabell".
Dorothy
Kilgallen later managed to obtain the Dallas Police Department
radio logs for the day of the assassination. This revealed that as
soon as the shots were fired in the Dealey Plaza, Curry issued an
order to search the Grassy Knoll area. This contradicted what Curry
had told reporters and the Warren
Commission.
After viewing the Zapruder
Film
Curry came to the conclusion
that Governor John
Connally
and John
F. Kennedy
had been hit by separate
bullets. He told interviewer Tom Johnson that he was not convinced
that Lee
Harvey Oswald killed
Kennedy: "We don't have any proof that Oswald fired the rifle,
and never did. Nobody's yet been able to put him in the building (Texas
School Book Depository) with a gun in his hand."
Jesse Curry, who published
the book, The JFK Assassination File
(1969), died of a heart attack in June, 1980.
Open
Debate on the Kennedy Assassination
(1)
Jesse Curry, interviewed by Leon D. Hubert for the Warren
Commission Report (15th April, 1964)
Leon D. Hubert: Can you tell us what you know about the matter from
that point on, and it may be just as well if you will tell it in a
narrative fashion. I will ask you some questions as we go along, or
perhaps wait until the end to fill in. We will see how it works out.
Briefly, what we want to know is what you know about the whole thing.
Jesse
Curry: Well, on November 22, I was in the lead car of the Presidential
caravan. With me were Secret Service Winston Lawson and Forrest Sorrels,
and the sheriff of Dallas County, Bill Decker, and we were nearing
the triple underpass in the western part of Dallas, and which is near
Stemmons Expressway - it was necessary for us to move to Elm Street
in order to get on the Stemmons Expressway to get the President's
caravan down to the Trade Mart where they were going to have a luncheon.
I
heard a sharp report. We were near the railroad yards at this time,
and I didn't know - I didn't know exactly where this report came from,
whether it was above us or where, but this was followed by two more
reports, and at that time I looked in my rear view mirror and I saw
some commotion in the President's caravan and realized that probably
something was wrong, and it seemed to be speeding up, and about this
time a motorcycle officer, I believe it was Officer Chaney rode up
beside us and I asked if something happened back there and he said,
"Yes," and I said, "Has somebody been shot?" And
he said, "I think so." So, I then ordered him to take us
to Parkland Hospital which was the nearest hospital, so we took the
President's caravan then to Parkland Hospital and they were - the
President, the Vice President and the Governor - were taken into the
hospital and I remained at the hospital for - oh - some hour or so.
At
about 1:15 that day - this first incident occurred about 12:30 or
so, and about 1:15 I was notified that one of our officers had been
shot, and a few minutes later was told that he was dead on arrival
at the hospital. At that time we didn't know who shot him. I was just
told it was in Oak Cliff.
I was still at the hospital at this time and I was told by some of
the Secret Service people, I don't recall who, to get my car ready
and another car ready to take the President - we were informed that
President Kennedy had expired - and we were asked to have two automobiles
standing by to take President Johnson to Love Field.
(2)
Jesse Curry, interviewed by Leon D. Hubert for the Warren
Commission Report (15th April, 1964)
Leon D. Hubert: Did you delegate to any specific person the security
of Oswald?
Jesse
Curry: No, sir; I could see that he was being taken care of by the
captain on duty, Captain Talbert, and Lieutenant Wiggins was assisting
in it, so I didn't see any need to particularly call some officer
over there and say, "Look, you are in charge of this security
in this basement." It was being taken care of, I could see.
Leon
D. Hubert: Well, for the record, will you tell us what you saw that
satisfied you that it was being taken care of?
Jesse
Curry: Officers were being stationed at the strategic points in the
basement to screen people coming in, and they were moving out the
vehicles as I asked them to, so I went on upstairs and I told Chief
Batchelor and Chief Stevenson that we should clean out everything
in the basement and screen everything that came back in.
Leon
D. Hubert: When you ordered everything to be "screened"
did you give any specific instructions?
Jesse
Curry: No; I didn't.
Leon
D. Hubert: Or does that term have any significance in police work
?
Jesse
Curry: Well, it means to satisfy yourself that they were people who
had a legitimate reason to be there when you screen them.
Leon
D. Hubert: In other words, within the organization of the police department,
the word "screening" is understood so that you were satisfied
that there would not be people there who were not supposed to be there?
Jesse
Curry: Any unauthorized people.
Leon
D. Hubert: Just one more point on that - under the system, who would
be considered as unauthorized persons?
Jesse
Curry: I think I specifically stated that only newspaper reporters
or police officers would be allowed in the basement.
Leon
D. Hubert: Only the news media?
Jesse
Curry: Yes.
Leon
D. Hubert: Television people would be included, too?
Jesse
Curry: Yes.
Leon
D. Hubert: Was there any discussion of the route to be taken?
Jesse
Curry: Not at that time.
Leon
D. Hubert: All right; let's go ahead.
Jesse
Curry: Then, I went on upstairs and a little while later I went to
Fritz' office and they were interrogating him - they - there were
several people in there, some I recognized as FBI agents, some were
Secret Service agents, some were Dallas detectives, and Captain Fritz
was talking to Oswald at the time, I believe, and I stood around a
few moments and when there was a lull in the interrogation, I asked
Captain Fritz if he was about ready to transfer Oswald and he said,
"Well, no; they were still talking to him," so I left the
room.
Leon
D. Hubert: That was about what time?
Jesse
Curry: As I recall, it was probably 10:30, but I didn't care when
they transferred him at all. It didn't make any difference to me.
The arrangements had been made to transfer him and then when it was
brought to...
Leon
D. Hubert: What arrangements had been made?
Jesse
Curry: That we would transfer him to the sheriff, but at that time
we did not have any armored cars down there. We were just at that
time, I believe it was - understood that we would just put him in
the car and drive him down there...
Leon D. Hubert: Was a policeman to drive the armored car?
Jesse
Curry: No; not the armored car.
Leon
D. Hubert: Is that a factor, too - I suppose - it wouldn't be a member
of the police force under your control driving that car?
Jesse
Curry: No; but he felt like Fritz said if anyone tried to take our
prisoner we should be in a position to be able to cut out of the caravan
or to take off or do whatever was necessary to protect our prisoner.
So, I didn't argue with him about it - there was some merit to his
plan, so I told him, "Well, okay, but we would still use the
armored car as a decoy and let it go right on down just as we had
planned and if anyone planned to try to take our prisoner away from
us, they would be attacking an empty armored car," and that his
vehicle with the prisoner in it would have cut out of the caravan
and proceeded immediately to the county jail and the prisoner would
be taken into the county jail, and the way we figured it, he would
be there before the other caravan got there. Well, he asked me if
everything was ready and I said, "Yes, as far as I know, everything
is ready to go," and this was a little after 11 o'clock and I
said, "Well, I'll go on down to the basement," and was en
route to the basement when I was called to the telephone and Mayor
Cabell was on the telephone wanting to know something about the case,
how we were progressing, what was going on, and while I was talking
to him they made this transfer and Oswald was shot in the basement,
and he was rushed to Parkland Hospital and I was notified that he
had been shot in the basement.
Leon
D. Hubert: Did you know about his being shot before he moved to the
hospital in the ambulance?
Jesse
Curry: Yes, they called me from the jail office and said he had been
shot and an ambulance had been ordered.
Leon
D. Hubert: Now, after the shooting, what action did you take - that
is, the shooting of Oswald?
Jesse
Curry: Well, I don't recall any particular action I took. I was told
the man who shot him was in custody and was up in the jail. I think
I notified the mayor that the man had been shot while I was still
on the telephone with him and then I waited up in my office for word
from Parkland Hospital, and about 1:30, or I believe about 1:30, we
were informed that he had expired, and during this time I had been
informed that the man who shot him was a nightclub operator named
Jack Ruby, and that he was in custody up in the jail. After I was
informed that Oswald had died, I made an announcement to news media
that he had expired and that we had the man who shot him in custody
and as I recall, that's about the extent of my activity on that day.
(3)
Dorothy
Kilgallen, New York Journal American
(23rd August, 1964)
Twenty-four hours after the assassination, however, Chief
Curry assured reporters that the sound of the shots told him at once
they had come from the Texas School Depository and that "right
away" he radioed an order to surround and search the building.
But actually, as we see from the Police Department's official version
of events. Chief Curry's immediate concern was not the Depository,
but the triple-tiered overpass : towards which the Presidential car
was moving at about eight miles an hour when the fatal shots were
fired.
(4)
Leo Sauvage, The New Leader (28th September 1964)
The assassination of President Kennedy last November 22 in Dallas
was followed by a macabre farce whose bewildering and revolting episodes
hardly need to be retold. But no theory is valid if it does not take
apart and analyze minutely the various elements of these episodes
as they have been related, imagined, evaded, deformed or plainly falsified
by the investigators. This is certainly not what Thomas Buchanan has
done in his widely publicized L’Express articles, which
subsequently were published in expanded form by Editions Julliard
as Les Assassins de Kennedy (and will be brought out by Putnam’s
in January, under the title, Who Killed Kennedy?). On the contrary,
in relating, imagining, evading, deforming or openly falsifying the
facts of the case, Buchanan has accomplished the remarkable feat of
constructing an even more incredible farce than the one performed
in Dallas. Indeed, what L’Express pompously called Le Rapport
Buchanan constitutes, in my opinion, exactly the kind of “document”
Dallas needs to prove the lack of seriousness of those who attack
its Police Department and District Attorney.
In
presenting “The True Report on the Assassination” Mme. Françoise
Giroud, co-editor of the French weekly, tells us that Buchanan is
“a very quiet American, 44 years old, a sensitive novelist but
also an artillery captain during the War, and a mathematician, now
directing in Paris the programming of electronic computers in a large
establishment.” Then, before quoting an anonymous American publisher
who supposedly told Buchanan nobody could possibly contradict his
“brilliant demonstration,” Mme. Giroud goes on to declare:
“Thomas Buchanan, scientific by training and by inclination,
has gathered the facts, and it is strictly from the facts that he
has undertaken a concise presentation whose logical development is
impressive.”
The
impressive logical development which the mathematician of L’Express
applies to the assassination of John F. Kennedy starts with a first
gunman called “Assassin Number 2,” located on the railroad
overpass ahead of the Presidential car. This “assassin”
could have been Jack Ruby (a theory borrowed from the American journalist
Richard Dudman without crediting the source), or someone Ruby could
see from the windows of the Dallas Morning News (Buchanan’s
own contribution, since journalists who commented on the view from
the windows had seen only the Texas School Book Depository).
Buchanan
states next that a second gunman, called “Assassin Number 1,”
was on the sixth floor of the Depository, but he was not Lee Harvey
Oswald. In fact, Oswald is only “Accomplice Number 1.” His
role? According to Buchanan, who under the circumstances does not
hesitate to replace his electronic brain with a crystal ball, “Oswald
had let Assassin Number 1 into the Depository the night before the
murder; he had led him to the room on the sixth floor, brought him
the rifle, provided him with food and stood guard to make sure no
one else came into the room.”
There
follows a list of other accomplices, all members of the Dallas Police
Department. “If we call Oswald Accomplice Number 1,” Buchanan
observes knowingly, “we have no trouble finding Accomplice Number
2; he is the policeman who gave the order to let Oswald leave the
building.” ‘Number 3” is “the policeman who issued
the order to pick up Oswald before his 90 co-workers had been assembled
and counted.” Buchanan, deducing that “this officer already
knew Oswald’s role in the conspiracy,” emphasizes that the
officer’s “role was more important than that of the other
accomplices.” “Number 4” is a plainclothes officer
in an automobile, whose mission was to “follow Oswald to arrest
him at the proper moment.” “Accomplice Number 5” is
the famous J. D. Tippit, whose murder was attributed by the authorities
to Oswald. At the “agreed signal” (with Accomplice Number
4), Tippit was supposed to arrest Oswald, induce him to pull out his
pistol (the police, Buchanan reveals to us at this point, let Oswald
go to his room first only to give him the chance to get his pistol),
then kill him in “self-defense.” Instead, Tippit, an “inveterate
bungler,” allowed himself to be outmaneuvered and slain by Oswald.
What was Assassin Number
1 (that is, Killer Number 2, the man on the sixth floor) doing in
the meantime, and who was he? The mathematician truly proves here
what an American artillery captain can do when a Parisian weekly gives
him the chance to deploy his gifts as a sensitive novelist. “
On November 22, 1963, Assassin
Number 1 wore a police uniform,” he declares dramatically. Then
he continues with enormous subtlety: “Unless he has been killed
since, I believe he still wears it.” At first glance, this signifies
the chances are 50-50 the man was Tippit. But the chances mount close
to 100 per cent when Buchanan affirms next that Assassin Number 1
left the area of the crime “in a patrol car, without doubt,”
and adds “we will speak again of a police car occupied by one
man, contrary to the rules” (the case of Tippit). Buchanan is
anxious to maintain a little suspense here, and it certainly remains
possible that Tippit had been ordered only to pick up Assassin Number
1 at Elm Street and take him elsewhere. But the reader, if he is sufficiently
dazzled by Thomas Buchanan’s logic, will reason that Assassin
Number 1 and Accomplice Number 5 were one and the same.
All this, one sees, is
quite clear. Except, obviously, the reasons for which the author speaks
so unjustly of officer Tippit as an “inveterate bungler.”
For either Assassin Number 1 or as the unnumbered accomplice (and
future Accomplice Number 5) in charge of helping Assassin Number 1
get away from the assassination scene, he had acquitted himself impeccably.
Except also that one does not see at all how and why in the first
instance Tippit needed Oswald to get into the Depository the night
before, and why and how, in the second instance, the assassin needed
Tippit to get out of the Depository. Why should Accomplice Number
2 - who, one perhaps recalls, “gave the order to let Oswald leave”
- have been unable to do the same for Assassin Number 1, who even
“wore a police uniform?”
Let us return now to the
thread of deductions which led this astonishing mathematician (he
demonstrates all, said L’Express, “from the facts - and
only the facts - with an extremely rigorous mind”) to accomplices
2, 3, 4 and their specific tasks.
At the start, there was
one actual fact: Oswald was able to leave the Depository without being
stopped, even though Police Chief Jesse Curry said he “immediately”
gave the order to surround the building. But Buchanan’s peculiarly
rigorous mind (which does not keep him from borrowing at will from
these same Dallas police for all the roles he needs in his scenario)
leads him to avoid, apparently as not scientific, any thought that
Jesse Curry’s men - and Jesse Curry himself - could have done
a bad job on Elm Street. Thus the actual fact turns, in Buchanan’s
mathematics, into a series of postulates such as these: “Almost
immediately after the last shot, the police blocked all the exists
of the building…There was no panic among the police…They
were immediately directed to the Depository”
I have not found anywhere
in the writings of Buchanan - who, at the time he made these categorical
statements, had not yet even set foot in Dallas - the least hint as
to the unpublished information on which he bases his remarks. But
once it is admitted that these statements must be recognized and respected,
like incontrovertible postulates, on the faith of Thomas Buchanan’s
word, there is obviously no difficulty in drawing from them theorems
such as the one defining Accomplice Number 2 as “the policeman
who gave the order to let Oswald leave the building.” We even
have the converse, showing the geometric character of the reasoning:
“This order did not only constitute a flagrant violation of the
instructions which the police were supposed to observe in such circumstances;
it also constituted an act of disobedience to the personal order of
the Chief of Police.”
(5)
Donald
Gibson, The
Kennedy Assassination Cover-up
(1999)
Jesse Curry makes it clear
that individuals from the Secret Service controlled the security arrangements
for President Kennedy's trip and people at the FBI controlled the
investigation. According to Curry," Winston G. Lawson of the
Washington Secret Service office was the central figure in the planning
of security arrangements. Curry emphasizes that the security provided
by Lawson was heavy except the "short stretch of Elm Street where
the President was shot." Curry notes that the Texas Book Depository
was "virtually ignored."
Curry points out that neither
the Secret Service nor the FBI asked for any help in locating possible
conspirators. The FBI had never shared the information it had on Oswald
prior to the assassination. Less than twelve hours after the assassination,
Curry transferred the evidence to the FBI, trusting them to do a good
job and to return the evidence. They did neither. The Secret Service
had already seized the body." Curry says that in the days after
the assassination Dallas investigators waited for the release of a
detailed autopsy report, complete
with photographic evidence. It never came and Curry says that he suspected
that some of the material was destroyed.
Curry saw signs of a conspiracy
in other aspects of the case as well. For example, Curry points to
numerous facts and reports which indicated that the President was
hit from the front. He also notes that a picture of the Book Depository
shows a man who looks like Oswald standing in front at the time the
President was killed.
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