The Roscoe White theory is a pearl in the dead of night for assassination researchers and theorists. It offers so much information as to the identity of the Grassy Knoll gunman and those behind him pulling the strings. It is the most thought provoking theory and the closest we can get to actually labeling those involved and naming the actual shooters. It is the lost treasure of Atlantis. It is the Rosetta stone of the assassination.

Or is it?

Larry Howard, Director of Operations of the Dallas KAIC, recounts the strange events of the Roscoe White story:
One day, in the spring of 1990, a young man by the name of Ricky White walked through our doors and came to us and said, 'I think my father killed John Kennedy and I'd like for you all to prove he didn't.' We get many kooks that come by with all these crazy stories and we thought here's another one. We asked him, 'Why do you think your father killed John Kennedy?'

And he said, 'Well, in 1982, I found my father's footlocker in Paris, Texas, after my Grandfather died, in an old room at the back of the house. In the footlocker was a diary that told of my father's participation in the assassination of JFK.'

White, according to the diary, fired two shots at Kennedy from behind the picket fence with a 7.65 German Mauser. Roscoe White believed both shots hit Kennedy.

'My father's code name was 'Mandarin', and the other two gunmen were 'Saul' and 'Lebanon'. And as I read further it also says my father killed a police officer on Tenth and Patton, it didn't say officer Tippit, just a police officer.'

The first thing we asked, being skeptical, was, 'Where's the diary?'

He said, 'I don't have it. The FBI took it from me in 1988.'

So, our first thoughts were, well here's another kook.

In the footlocker with the diary, Ricky found a key to a safe deposit box. He asked the D.A. of Midland, Texas, to help him attempt to access the deposit box at a Dallas bank. The D.A. notified the FBI who then interrogated Ricky for nearly five hours, taking him to the federal building along with his father's personal effects - including the diary. Within hours of Ricky returning home with his father's things, an FBI agent carrying a briefcase comes to the house saying he left his notebook in the box containing Roscoe's things. He is alone momentarily with the box as Ricky's wife leaves the room to inform Ricky of the agent's presence. Later, it is discovered that the diary is missing from the box.

We said, 'What else do you have?'

He said, 'Well, my father left on the same ship Oswald did to the Philippines.'

And sure enough, he had the documentation to prove that.

White served in the Marine Corps with Oswald. The two were stationed together in Marine Air Wing I at Japan's Atsugi Air Base, home of a highly secret CIA operation.

'And my mother worked for Jack Ruby.'

And low and behold he had a picture of his mother and Jack Ruby together.

And he said, 'My father joined the Dallas Police department in October of 1963.'

And then we really got excited. White said, 'My father had photographs of things no one else had pertaining to the case.'

His father died in 1971 and in 1975 someone broke into their house in Paris, Texas where he'd moved to. There were two men, one stabbed his mother with an ice-pick, and they stole only the assassination material.

They were arrested in Phoenix, Arizona, where the police found this assassination material and they called the FBI and the Dallas Police. The FBI then came in and looked at these photographs that White had in his possession.

After Oswald was arrested, the Dallas Police found two backyard photographs of Oswald holding a rifle and communist newspapers. In this box of material stolen from the White home was a third backyard photograph, with Oswald in a different pose, that no one in the world had ever seen.

We started to add all these things up. These things you can't deny, this is hard evidence that his father was involved.

But there was more. Using a cryptic written message left by his father, Ricky White travels back to Paris, Texas, to his grandfather's empty house. There in the attic, shielded by boards, Ricky discovers an unusual steel container. He returns to Midland before opening the container. It was a round steel container with an air-tight sealed lid. It was from the Navy, it's what they use to carry pistols in so they don't rust. He went and got a crowbar and opened the top.

Inside the container, wrapped in pieces of plastic were three old decoded cables to his father.

These were orders to kill John Kennedy.

Ricky White told us that, in the now-stolen diary, it stated that his father's code name was 'Mandarin' and that he worked for some kind of Rifle program.

The first cable said, 'Forget foreign assignments. Destination Dallas.' It was sent to code-name 'Mandarin' just like Ricky said. At the bottom of the cable were the words 'RE/RIFLE XXX DESTROY' It was dated August l963.

The second cable, dated September 1963 said, 'Dallas destination chosen. Hide within department.' Which meant the police department. So he got a job at the Dallas police department.

The last cable was dated December 1963 and it said, 'Stay within department, all witnesses have eyes ears and noses.' and at the bottom again, 'RE/RIFLE XXX DESTROY' just like in the others.

These cables also had printed on them Roscoe White's military serial number.

Along with the three cables were negatives of Roscoe White's mother and father which only he had access to, his military dog-tags bearing his serial number (the same one as on the cables) and thus identifying him as the recipient of the messages, a picture of Jack Ruby shooting Oswald, a picture of the Warren Commission meeting so that you'd know what all this related to. And in the bottom of the casket was a small green book, a short-hand dictionary, and his father had taken it and started, in his handwriting, at the back of the book upside-down, he wrote, ' Roscoe Anthony White. Twenty-eight people died under the witness elimination program.'

Roscoe White killed 28 of the witnesses after the assassination.

In this book there was also newspaper clippings of the people he murdered. And there is a numbered code on every page. Since the summer of l990, we haven't been able to break one of those codes. We are still trying.

Roscoe White's mysterious death also supports his son's story. In 1970, after Roscoe White suddenly became religious, he decided not to be an assassin anymore. He'd got a job at a welding shop and in l971 he was given another assignment and he refused to do it. He went to lunch, came back, and lit his welding torch. He blew up. Someone had placed a five gallon container of liquid fuel underneath his workbench.

He lived for 26 hours, long enough, on his death bed, to tell his pastor Jack Shaw that he'd killed many people on foreign and domestic soil for his country. At the time he thought it was right but now he knew it was wrong. He asked for God to forgive him. Then he died. And with that last statement he made, I am convinced the Roscoe White story is absolutely true.

Larry Howard

The Roscoe White theory is also supported by other evidence:
* Two witnesses identified Roscoe White in Dealey Plaza near the picket fence at the time of the assassination.
* An eyewitness was in J.D. Tippit' s house a week before the, assassination and saw Roscoe White and another man in discussion with Tippit.
* An Ex-CIA operative met Roscoe White in Dallas in the Summer of 1962 concerning the purchase of guns.
* A woman's father was friends with Roscoe White and Jack Ruby and was possibly involved with eliminating witnesses. Her father was killed by Dallas Police while trying to escape when in custody for conspiracy to murder.
* A friend of Lee Oswald's in New Orleans was told about Roscoe White in the late summer of 1963 by Lee Oswald.
* A nightclub owner was introduced to Roscoe White by Jack Ruby in the owner's club.

All this evidence does point strongly to the case that, not only was White the Grassy Knoll gunman, he also killed Tippit when Tippit decided not to drive White and Oswald to the safe house (see BADGMEN - PLURAL also in this issue), and he then went on to lake part in eliminating witnesses - most possibly while still dressed as a Dallas Policeman! (Remember cable no. 8: 'stay within department'!!)

The Roscoe White theory also explains that the orders to assassinate the President came from the hierarchy of the government itself. The whole case; the shooting, the cover-up, the assassins, the patsy - everything, is solved by the Roscoe White theory.

If only, only, we had that diary and could break the codes. If, if...

If.

Dear Steve,
Correspondence traveling via the Publisher is always late. It is batched and forwarded as the collection gets bothersome. Thus, your fine letter of March 15th had to wend its way from south of the equator, to our storm battered shores into Carol Publishing, and finally here to "Gay Town" D.C.

I am delighted with your letter, moreso with your publication. As a first effort it is great. I hope it signals an up-hill, steadily rising standard that will surpass all others in its field. In some cases this will not be difficult; and I, for one, hesitate to make comparisons so early. I appreciate your thoughtfulness in sending me this first copy of "Probable Cause."

This causes me to take immediate steps to have something in the mail to you while I take more time to review your work in detail. I have read almost all of it; but now I want to do it more minutely. Then you'll hear from me again. I'll see if I can suitably respond to your request for material.

As I did during my work with Oliver Stone, I am going to urge that you reduce your recapitulation of the Warren Report mythology, and move into the more important area of "Why?" It bothers me no end to see so many good researchers frothing at the seams as one suggests that the "Magic" bullet went this way, and the other suggests otherwise; or that Oswald was a terrible U. S. Marine marksman, and others credit him with skill.

Or even worse, to find that a whole new folk-lore has been created about the policeman father [Roscoe White] of some juvenile in some such way as we went through the "Mafia" era. We need to get the serious people into serious thought in order to build upon what we are learning and what we have known.

This is one thing I admire about Stone. The very first time I met him he was already talking about the great significance of the JFK Vietnam decision. He had already written the "Man X" scenario into the script before I ever met him and ever saw the script itself. I found out later that the Editor of FREEDOM magazine (where most of my "JFK, the CIA, Vietnam..." stuff had already been published) had long before sent him a set of those articles; and even more importantly that Jim Garrison had sent him copies of the lengthy correspondence I had had with him (Jim) while I was in the process of reviewing his manuscript. Stone was right into that and was ready to put Vietnam, along with other things into the script. Then I saw myself in the mirror as "Man X".

It was a stroke of genius to open the film with those great lines from the Eisenhower speech of Jan. 1961.

In short, this is the way future work has got to go. I've had the "Dallas" scenario. It's time to move forward.

I don't know whether you know this or not; but some years ago I broadcast regularly with Mark Aarons on ABC Radio (Australia). We did a lot of shows on the "Secret team" lines among other things. We finally got into the period of the Nugan-Hand Bank failure, the death of Frank Nugan and the disappearance of Michael Hand. I knew Mike and met him several times as his CIA work brought him into the Pentagon to visit with Lansdale. It is truly amazing how all of this circles around. All we do in that Pentagon is listen to Songlines. By the way, Mike Hand is one of our more famous "MIA's."

I am enclosing a bit of a speech I made a while back. It was delivered to a small local organization. If you have any use for it you are free to use it.

You'll hear from me later as I work my way back through "Probable Cause." That's a good title. Your question "Probable Cause" and my question "Why" belong together... in good company.

I'm very busy with a Swedish reporter in town, a plan for a major Chinese movie, and I have been invited to join the Dalai Lama while he is here at the National Press Club on (April) the 29th. I worked on the operation that slipped him out of Tibet in 1959, and then worked a long time to support the Khampa tribesmen of SE Tibet during 1959-1960. All this keeps a guy going.

Sincerely,

L. Fletcher Prouty.