OSWALD IN MONTREAL: THE FBI REPORT THAT WAS HIDDEN FROM THE WARREN COMMISSION

Here is the full FBI report that contained all the details of the Jean-Paul Tremblay sighting of Lee Harvey Oswald in Montreal. This report have been hidden from the Warren Com, probably because its revealed that the Tremblay's account was given enough credential to justify further investigation from both the RCMP and the FBI.




For the present post, I'm just reproducing the pictures of this report. I will give more information on its content in the next posts. (Unfortunately, I'm a little too busy with some personal matters to spend all the time I should on this Blog.) But a word of caution: I made contact with people that were in the Quebec-Washington Guantanamo Walk for peace, and they disagree with the FBI on the identification of character #1 as being Fred Moore.

THE LAST PHOTOS OF THE RCMP ALBUM

Sorry for my long absence. I would be able to resume posting on this topic in the following days. Here are the last pictures of the RCMP album in which Customs' inspector Jean-Paul Tremblay was able to identified 3 peoples that he saw with Oswald in Montreal.


Photos 7, 8, 9 and 10 from RCMP photos album of theQuebec-
Washington-Guantanamo Walk for Peace.


In my next post, I will publish the full long redacted FBI report that named the people that where seen with Oswald in Montreal.

OSWALD SEEN IN MONTREAL: A VERY OFFICIAL LETTER

More than a vague rumour, the fact that Lee Harvey Oswald was seen in Montreal in the Summer of 1963 was the subject of a very official formal letter sent by a Montreal branch of the US Treasury Department to the Secret Service in Washington.

This letter merits some thoughtful consideration. Before rejecting reports placing Oswald in Montreal as unfounded rumours, we should appreciate the fact that at least one report to this effect was considered credible enough to be the subject of an official letter signed by both the Senior Customs Representative based in Montreal and by a regional Supervising Customs Agent.

The letter reads as follow:
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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TREASURY DEPARTEMENT
BUREAU OF CUSTOMS
MONTREAL, CANADA

November 29, 1963

Secret Service
U. S. Treasury Department
S. W. Corner Pennsylvania Ave. and 15th St. N. W.
Washington, D.C.

Dear Sirs:

Several persons have contacted this office recently and advised that Lee Oswald, suspected of assassinating the late President Kennedy, was seen distributing pamphlets entitled “Fair Play for Cuba”, on St. Jacques and McGill Streets, Montreal during the summer of 1963.

Mr Jean Paul Tremblay, Investigator, Customs and Excise, Montreal stated on November 27, 1963 that he received one of the above mentioned pamphlets from a man on St. Jacques Street, Montreal, believe to be in August 1963, and he is positive that this person was Oswald. Mr Tremblay also stated that Oswald was accompanied at the time by a short, homely, heavy woman who took unusually long steps when walking and two men about Oswald’s age and weight. One of these two men is described as a little taller than Oswald and has a freckled face. Mr Tremblay also stated that he believes he could identify the three persons that accompanied Oswald and that the reason for paying special attention to these persons was because he was working on cases involving Cuba at the time.

The above is submitted in hopes that it will assist you in your investigation.

Sincerely yours,
Aurelien Chassé
Senior Customs Representative

c.c. SCA, New York, New York
Consul General, Montreal, P.Q.

APPROVED:
Lawrence Fleishman
Supervising Customs Agent, Region I
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Would officials from the Bureau of Customs have signed such an official letter on a such important matter, if they didn’t believe in the seriousness of its content? Surely not! So, maybe we should not dismiss the possibility that Lee Harvey Oswald was indeed in Montreal at some time during the Summer of 1963. The FBI and the RCMP didn’t dismiss it entirely. Like we will see in the next post, they made some effort to resolve this matter. They were even able to identified one of Oswald’s companions from a series of photographs taken during the Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk for Peace.

Photos 3, 4, 5 and 6 from RCMP photos album of the
Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk for Peace.

OSWALD IN MONTREAL:

WAS OSWALD SENT TO CANADA TO INFILTRATE
THE COMMITTEE FOR NONVIOLENT ACTION (CNVA) ?

Even if most researchers of the JFK assassination may dismiss entirely the possibility that Lee Harvey Oswald made a trip to Montreal in the Summer of 1963, some researchers invested lot of efforts to find out the truth about this rumor.

For one, researcher Gary Shaw who initiated many FOIA requests on the JFK assasination, went at length to obtain more files about the reported sighting of Oswald in Montreal. Shaw even went as far as filing court procedures against the FBI to obtain an album of photographs of the Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo walk for peace, listed in Warren Commission exhibits listing. The photographs were annexed to a heavily redacted FBI memorandum dealing with allegations that Lee Harvey Oswald was in Montreal during the Summer of 1963.

Not small hearsay rumours, the allegations were in fact an official report from a US Customs senior representative to the effect that a Canadian Custom and Excise investigator (Jean-Paul Tremblay) saw Lee Harvey Oswald distributing Fair Play for Cuba Committee leaflets in Montreal. The report even stated that the investigator was able to identified two individuals that were distributing leaflets with Oswald from photographs taken during the Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk for peace.

After many court orders, appeals and reversals, in 1984 the FBI succeed to keep the photo album away from Gary Shaw and the public eye.

But 8 years later, in 1992, the JFK Records Act forced the FBI to open its files, and the album, with lot of other documents on Oswald’ Montreal sighting, were made available at the National Archives. I was able to consult and photocopy them during a short visit in 1996. To my knowledge, nobody ever published them.

In the present series of posts, I will put online the ten photographs that were in this album and new un-redacted memos that even specify the name of one man that was distributing FPCC leaflets with Oswald.
Photograph #1 and #2 of this album are reproduced below.

They are the most interesting of them all because, according to Jean-Paul Tremblay, characters #1 and #2 (the two at the left) were with Oswald in Montreal. In a memo that I will also reproduce in the next post, character #1 is identified as Fred Moore, an important figure of the USA non-violent movement of the sixties. Was Oswald sent in Montreal to infiltrate this movement? That’s what we will discuss in the next posts.

CONSPIRACIES IN MONTREAL PART II: JAMES EARL RAY AND MONTREAL FRENCH CONNECTION

While we know as an historical fact that John Wilkes Booth traveled to Montreal and was recruited in this city by Confederate agents to participate in a plot again Abraham Lincoln, “history” is less affirmative about the Montreal presence of James Earl Ray and Lee Harvey Oswald, the two men that “history” designated as assassins of Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy.

In fact, “history” only accept the reality of the James Earl Ray presence in Canada and even open minded researchers of the JFK assassination are perplexed about any presence of Oswald in Montreal.

So, even if chronologically the Kennedy assassination happens before, let start by examining the least controversial of the two Montreal presences.What we know about James Earl Ray presence in Montreal is basically due to his own account delivered in his autobiography: Who Killed Martin Luther King Jr.?: The True Story by the Alleged Assassin.

The same facts, with further research on the characters and events reported by Ray, are also exposed in two important books by his last lawyer William F. Pepper: Orders to Kill: The
Truth Behind the Murder of Martin Luther King, Jr and An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King.

After escaping from a Missouri jail in April 1967, James Earl Ray traveled to Canada. In July 1967, he was in Montreal, hanging around at Neptune’s, a seamen bar near the port. In search of papers or some work on a boat going to Europe, Ray, according to his own story, met a shadowy smuggler named “Raoul” or “Raul”. Even if Ray feared to go back in the United States, Raoul who told Ray that he would be able to get him a forged passport in return for his help, convinced the fugitive to participate in a smuggling scheme between Canada and US.

Most of the researchers of the MLK assassination didn’t pay a lot of attention to this Canada-USA smuggling scheme. Since Ray alleged that he was framed-up by Raoul who asked him to buy the murder weapon in Memphis for smuggling purpose, researchers were more interested by Ray and Raoul’s later guns smuggling activities between USA and Mexico. But Ray and Raoul’s Canada-USA traffic activities shouldn’t be overlooked because they reveal an essential aspect of the MLK conspiracy: the fact that its source is deep rooted in the French Connection heroin traffic milieu.

Even if it is not worded in black ink on white paper, it is clear from the context that what ray and Raoul were carrying across the border was dope. Ray wrote in his book how he used taxis to smuggle packages between Windsor and Detroit; it is evident that Ray wasn’t passing guns in a cab. More specifically, Ray wrote about Raoul and himself that: “we'd meet in Windsor, he'd hand over the contraband and leave, then I'd carry his package down to Detroit, where we'd hook up again.” It is clear that the contraband he is talking about is something small, something that neither the uncooperative taxi drivers or the Customs officers will notice in a cab. And for sure this thing can only be drug.

That James Earl Ray might have been drawn, against his knowing, in the MLK conspiracy by members of Montreal’s French Connection is interesting when one take in account that William Pepper reported in An Act of State that: “Raul was identified as a person seen in the company of Jack Ruby in 1963, usually at the Carousel, Ruby's other Dallas club. Beverly Oliver said
that on one occasion, she remembered Raul giving Ruby $20,000.”

From the research done for my book “De Dallas a Montreal” (see previous posts) and from information gathered after its publication, I can confirm that Jack Ruby, already known to be implicated in heroin traffic, was in contact with member of Montreal French Connection, more specifically with Lucien Rivard, an important arm and heroin trafficker linked to Jos Bonanno and
Montreal Cotroni family.

Since he was arrested in 1965, it is sure that Rivard could not have been an active part of the MLK assassination. But still according to author William Pepper, other people from the Montreal Mafia
took a part in it. In his book, Orders to Kill, Pepper reports that Jules Ricco Kimble, a CIA contract agent, confided to him that Luigi Greco, one of Bonanno family top lieutenant in Montreal, had a part in it. According to Kimble, some of Greco’s men did fly from Québec to Memphis to take part in Martin Luther King assassination.