ME: Wait—back up. When did Ferrie sell Oswald on killing Kennedy?
STONE: I think he flew to Dallas on Saturday, November sixteenth. Instead of flying north to give Frank Knox his go order, he flew west to Dallas.
ME: Is there any record of Oswald’s movements that weekend?
STONE: No. Those two days have always been a black hole in his timeline. No one has ever been able to pin down where Lee was either Saturday or Sunday. He disappeared Friday after work and reappeared Sunday night at the Paine house. Ferrie had plenty of time to sell him on the idea.
KAISER: And to buy the second Carcano.
ME: There’s no documented record of Ferrie being in Dallas between November fifteenth and the twenty-second?
I remember Stone and Kaiser looking at each other when I asked this. Then Kaiser nodded, and Stone seemed to make some silent decision.
STONE: No known record. In fact, there are two relevant reports that have never been seen by the public. One is among the sealed assassination records in Maryland. The other is in a special FBI archive in Washington. It was never turned over to the Warren Commission or the House Select Committee.
ME: What do those records say?
STONE: The sealed record contains a statement by FBI agent James Hosty, who was surveilling Oswald because of his earlier defection to Russia. Lee was just one of Hosty’s responsibilities. Anyway, that weekend, Hosty claimed to have sensed other surveillance on Oswald, or even on the both of them. Hosty—and Hoover—assumed this was probably CIA surveillance. But given what we know, my theory is that Hosty sensed either David Ferrie looking for a safe opening with Oswald, or Frank Knox.
ME: And the second record?
STONE: During Jim Garrison’s investigation of Clay Shaw in 1965, an FBI agent based in Dallas saw a close-up picture of David Ferrie. At that time he told his SAC that he believed he’d seen Ferrie in Dallas on the weekend prior to the assassination—at a diner, alone. With Ferrie’s fake eyebrows and hairpiece, it’s hard to believe that agent could have been mistaken.
ME: What happened to that report?
KAISER: Hoover ordered it buried.
ME: But why would Oswald have agreed to kill Kennedy for Ferrie? It may seem an obvious question, but I’m not sure I understand his motive.
STONE: This is where the psychologists are right. Lee strongly prefigured the later killers such as John Hinckley, Mark David Chapman, and the school shooters. His life had been one long string of failures. Emigrating to Cuba was his final fantasy. The Russians didn’t want him, employers didn’t want him, his wife had left him. When the Cubans said no to his defection, he basically had nothing left. Three weeks before the black hole weekend, Lee actually attended a rally where General Walker spoke, almost as if he was planning to try once more to assassinate him. Lee was truly ready for anything at that point, so long as it was sensational.
KAISER: In behavioral science parlance, Oswald was decompensating. He’d endured stressor after stressor. Killing Kennedy—who had been actively trying to overthrow and even kill Castro—would have made Lee a hero to Castro and the Cuban people. I’m sure Oswald could see himself driving along the Malecón with Fidel in a big convertible, waving to the adoring crowds.
ME: What about the Cuban student, Cruz? The one who bought the Carcano that was in Brody’s house?
STONE: I think Ferrie came up with that angle the night he thought of the Oswald plan. If the goal was to sell the world on a Cuban plot—and Marcello on his plan—then they needed a Cuban conspiracy. The way to create that was to pin a rifle like Oswald’s to another loyal Communist—ideally, a native Cuban.
KAISER: One with a criminal record, so his prints would be on file.
ME: You make Ferrie sound like a criminal genius.
KAISER: Some Cuban exiles actually called him “the master of intrigue.” His brilliance is exaggerated, but he was a devious guy. In any case, all Ferrie had to do to get that second Carcano was walk into a Texas gun shop and buy one.
STONE: And two boxes of ammunition. Western Cartridge Company 6.58-millimeter, manufactured in the U.S. for Italy during the war.
KAISER: Right. The ammunition’s key.
ME: So how did they frame Eladio Cruz? They killed him and put his prints on the rifle?
KAISER: And dumped him in the swamp. You nailed it. Probably on the night of Tuesday, November nineteenth.
STONE: But first Ferrie had to carry the revised mission order to Frank Knox. He probably flew out of Dallas on the Sunday after seeing Oswald. We’re trying to check his movements during that period, but access to a Marcello plane means he could have traveled as his schedule allowed, with no one the wiser.
ME: You think Frank Knox just went along with the Oswald scheme?
STONE: Frank was a soldier. He would have seen the advantages. He simply went from being the primary shooter to the backup.
ME: But that second Carcano was never found. It was never associated with the assassination in any way. What was the point in getting it? Was Knox supposed to use it against Kennedy?
STONE: I think he was. But Frank would have known better than to trust a critical shot to a junk rifle. My guess is that he told Ferrie he’d leave the Carcano at the scene, but he wasn’t going to shoot with it. Otherwise, Marcello might have gotten angry when things didn’t go the way he expected.
ME: Then why wasn’t the rifle found?
KAISER: Maybe Frank didn’t want to risk carrying two rifles into the Dal-Tex Building. That’s a serious tactical challenge.
STONE: Or maybe he worried that the FBI or CIA had forensic abilities he knew nothing about. Frank would have known that a presidential assassin’s rifle would be subjected to more scrutiny than any weapon in history.
KAISER: Or he might have kept it as insurance. Frank knew he was dealing with the mob, and he knew how those guys handled loose ends. Maybe he figured he could use the Carcano as leverage later.