HIGH-POWERED BOOK SHOOTS DOWN WARREN REPORT

From an Office Building with a High-Powered Rifle: A Report to the Public

From an FBI Agent…(Walterville, OR: TrineDay, 2012) by DON ADAMS

Rev. by Hugh Murray

            Don Adams has written a short, repetitious, extremely important book.  The repetition stems from the many FBI documents which support and expand upon material described in the text.

            Why is the book important?  Don Adams was an FBI agent who interviewed a character who may have been involved in the Kennedy assassination.  Adams queried him a week before, and then several days following, the murders in Dallas.  Adams knows what he did and what he was ordered to do.  Yet, it was not until some three decades after the assassination of Pres. Kennedy that Adams began to study some of the FBI documents; only then did he become aware of how his own information, his reports, had been revised, distorted, and falsified.  True, from November 1963 Adams was aware of pressures placed upon him and other agents from supervisors to avoid certain questions and to silence doubts about the official line on the Kennedy assassination.  Only later, however, did he begin to read critics of the Warren Report, and only after that, did he become aware of how his own FBI reports had been warped by his superiors.

            Adams wrote this book from personal experience.  In 1963, as an FBI rookie agent, he was assigned to the small FBI office in Thomasville, Georgia.  Soon after arriving in town, he overheard his local FBI chief warn the sheriff that Adams was “a Catholic, a Republican, and a Yankee.”(p. 30)  On 13 November 1963 Adams was assigned to interview a right-wing, racist, crank, Joseph Adams Milteer of Quitman, Ga.  This was a high priority assignment, for the agency had been alerted that Milteer had threatened President Kennedy.    On Saturday 16 November Adams spoke with Milteer as he distributed right-wing literature on the street.  Milteer quickly disclosed that he hated the Kennedys, Blacks and Yankees, but he issued no threats.  A week later when Adams heard the news from Dallas, Adams worried that Milteer might have been involved, and that he, the FBI agent, might have failed to prevent the murder.

            Adams was not the only FBI agent concerned about the local Kennedy-hating crank.  By 5 pm on 22 November 1963, Adams received orders to locate Milteer immediately, interview him and then hold him for the Secret Service.(8)  Adams rode to Milteer’s home, then to that of his lady friend and all his usual haunts, searching for his VW bus which was covered with right-wing signs.  Neither Milteer nor his vehicle were to be found.  Days passed.  Finally, Adams spotted the propaganda bus, but then, following FBI procedure, had to get another agent to accompany him.  The interview with Milteer began on the night of Wednesday 27 November into the early hours of Thursday the 28^th.  By this time, his superiors had commanded that he ask Milteer five, and only five questions.  Adams wanted to ask many more, but his boss made it clear, these five questions only.  Adams (with his silent colleague present) interrogated Milteer.  One question was, did Milteer have knowledge of the bombing of the 16^th Street Church in Birmingham on 15 September 1963.  Milteer denied any such knowledge.  The fifth question Adams was assigned to ask was, did Milteer ever make threats to assassinate the President, or had he participated in a plot to kill Kennedy.  Milteer adamantly denied ever making such threats or conspiring with others to kill the President.(42)  Case closed, as a prominent author might conclude.

            What Adams did not know at that time was that both the Miami Police Dept. and the FBI knew that Milteer had in October and November 1963 spoken with others on ways to assassinate the President.  Some of these threats were tape recorded on 9 November 1963.  The agency clearly knew of Milteer’s threats.  That is why they dispatched Agent Adams to locate Milteer both in mid-November and again on the day of the assassination.  Yet, the FBI did not inform Adams that the FBI had a copy of the tape of Milteer speaking with an informant and discussing how to take out the president with a high-powered rifle from an office building.  Adams was not informed about the tape, or the threats that Milteer had made, and he was constricted as to what he was allowed to ask Milteer by his FBI superiors.   Thus, when Milteer denied making threats or conspiring, Adams had no information with which to dispute Milteer.  And even if he had had the information, his superiors ordered him not to ask any more questions than the original five.

            Just what kind of investigation of the assassination was this?  It was one in which the FBI chief, J. Edgar Hoover, conferred by phone on 22 Nov. 1963 with newly sworn in President Lyndon Johnson and by 9 pm they had decided that Oswald was guilty and he had performed the deed alone, without conspirators.  Once the FBI Chief had made that decision, all information from the FBI agents was to bolster that view, and any evidence to the contrary was to be dismissed, denigrated, destroyed, forged, or falsified in order to promote the lone-nut Oswald theory.  Adams’ book is an indictment of the FBI in the case of the Kennedy assassination.

            Adams was not the only FBI agent to break ranks.  I recall at the time of the Garrison investigation, an FBI man appeared on local New Orleans television asserting that there had been FBI teletypes warning of an assassination soon before the deed in Dallas.  This was being exposed about the same time as the FBI’s destruction of a note hand-delivered to the Dallas FBI office in November 1963 by Lee Oswald.(52, 94)  Yet, the agency did nothing to reveal that Oswald might be dangerous.  Later, it was revealed that even a page of Oswald’s address book had been removed because it contained information about FBI agent James Hosty.  The page had been removed so the Warren Commission would not see it.

            Adams was slow to publicly question the FBI’s Kennedy investigation.  The FBI was the agency for which he worked for decades, and which he still holds in high esteem.  Yet, he is convinced it failed on this, its most important case.  The Adams’ book is more like the reluctant good soldier who grows to doubt, to question, and then to condemn, his commanders.  Adams condemns the FBI leadership on this most crucial case, crucial for Adams, for the FBI, and for the nation.

            Yet, Adams’ writing style and organization leave many loose ends.  For example, in a memo from the FBI’s Civil Rights Div., the SAC of Atlanta (the larger dist. which included both Agent Adams and the extreme racist Milteer) requested to have Milteer’s long distance phone checked “to ascertain if there were any calls to Dallas or New Orleans, during pertinent period.”(77)  Why the inquiry regarding calls to New Orleans, specifically?   Did the FBI have someone in mind in New Orleans with whom it thought Milteer was conspiring?  If so, who?  Oswald seemingly left NO in September 1963.  If the pertinent period is narrow, and closer to the assassination, who in New Orleans did the FBI have in mind?  (Recall, shortly after NO DA Jim Garrison arrested Clay Shaw, US Attorney General Ramsey Clark proclaimed that the Feds had already investigated Shaw and found no conspiracy.  Might the FBI have been thinking of Shaw in 1963?  Of Banister?  Of whom?)

            Even more intriguing, Adams reveals more about the informant, William Somersett, who spoke with Milteer in Florida where the conversation was taped on 9 November 1963.  This taped discussion provides the title of Adams’ book, for then Milteer spoke of killing the President by using a high-powered rifle from an office building.  He also said a patsy would be quickly arrested to divert the authorities from the real perpetrators.  Adams reports that the same informant, Somersett, continued his contacts with extremists and authorities later in the 1960s.  Writes Adams: “On April 3, 1968, Somersett called the Miami Police Dept. to alert them that he had obtained reliable information that Martin Luther King, Jr. was to be assassinated the next day.  Somersett’s information was ignored.”(117)  King was assassinated 4 April 1968.  One wishes Adams would have written more about Somersett.

            What Adams does expose is how the FBI “mistreated” Somersett.  Somersett not only spoke with Milteer on 9 November concerning the method to kill Kennedy, he met Milteer in Jacksonville on 23 November, where Milteer was “jubilant” about Dallas.  “Everything went true to form.  I guess you thought I was kidding when I said he would be killed from a window with a high-powered rifle.”  Somersett asked if Milteer had been guessing when he had predicted the assassination earlier in the month.  Milteer snapped, “I don’t do any guessing.”(103)

            Milteer’s jubilation and bragging that he predicted the Kennedy assassination reminded me of a personal incident.  I had swum against the stream in high school and college in my native New Orleans.  In 1960 I was one of the early members of New Orleans CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), and in September of that year was arrested in the city’s first lunch-counter sit-in.  Some of my relatives were horrified, and to restore honor to the family, one uncle sent money to George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party.  I rarely saw this uncle, but he would occasionally stop by my parents’ when I was there.  His usual greeting to me was, “How are the burr heads doing?”  This teasing would annoy me, which is what he wanted.  But, in time, the shock wore off, and I shrugged it off as his “hello.”  Nevertheless, there were serious differences between our world views.   In the early 1960s, if he had a few drinks, he would groan, “Ouuu, that Bobby [Kennedy]!  They’re going to get that Bobby.”  I tried to ignore that comment, too.  It was probably in early 1964, the first time I had seen him for awhile.  At some point in the visit, he smiled and said, “Didn’t I tell you!  Didn’t I tell you they were going to get him?!”  It took a moment for his comment to register with me, for at first I did not comprehend his reference.  Then my jaw dropped when I understood.  I replied, “You said they were going to get Bobby.”  “Well, they got the other one instead.”  Exasperated, I finally asked, “Who is this ‘they’ you keep talking about?”  Nonchalantly, he answered, “The mob, out in the parish.”  Out in the parish meant Jefferson Parish, adjacent to New Orleans, and the leader of the mob there was Carlos Marcello.  In early 1964 no one else was linking the Mafia to the Kennedy assassination.  So, in 1964 that remark only confirmed my view that politically my uncle was on another planet.

            Milteer’s teasing and bragging, like my uncle’s, may have been simple bluffing, braggadocio, bull s***, or it might have been…

            Informant Somersett also told the FBI that he received a phone call at 10:30am on Friday 22 November from Milteer calling from Dallas!  Milteer then assured Somersett that Kennedy would never return to Miami.  At 5:30 pm that day, the FBI assigned Agent Adams to locate and interrogate Milteer with only five approved questions.  Adams searched, but was unable to find Milteer at his home in Quitman or at his lady friend’s, driving by many times.  He could not locate Milteer in his Georgia locale until several days later.  However, unbeknownst to Adams, the local FBI office reported that Milteer was in Quitman on 22 November.  Adams maintains that he was the agent assigned to find Milteer, and the vocal racist was not there.  Recall, Somersett had reported that Milteer had called him from Dallas.  Because Somersett’s information contradicted the official FBI story, Adams discloses how the FBI began to undermine Somersett, inserting comments into his files that Somersett was not a reliable informant.  This discrediting of Somersett BEGAN only with the Kennedy assassination.

            The point is that Milteer was let off the hook by the FBI that declared (without good reason to do so) that Milteer was in Quitman, Georgia on 22 November 1963.  This attempt to deflect suspicion from Milteer was in direct conflict with the reliable information supplied by Somersett.  Therefore, Somersett had to be discredited.

            There is a minor discrepancy I should mention in this book.  On Sunday morning 24 November 1963 a young woman rang the doorbell of the Adams’ home in Georgia, and after some fearful misunderstanding, she identified herself as a student at Tulane/Newcomb Univ. in New Orleans.  “Ms. [Vereen} Alexander told me she had come to me because she knew Lee Harvey Oswald…”(39)  Yet, Adams, in his FBI report of the discussion does not report that.  He writes that there was a party in the summer of 1963 at the home of Dave Hoffman, at which Ms. Alexander “had the strong belief that Lee Harvey Oswald was also possibly present at the party.”(70)

            Ms. Alexander identified Al Peccarero as “a leader” and member of a local socialist group in New Orleans.”  Peccarero, in another FBI report, (not in this book), was also presented as the publicity director of the New Orleans Council on Peaceful Alternatives.  Yet, the same Al Peccarero, during the early 1960s, presented a speech before a large audience of the local White Citizens’ Council.  Which side was Al on?  I suspect he may have been on the payroll of Guy Banister, Kent Courtney, or some agency to spy on the student and university left.  (Admittedly, one may change views.  I have changed, and am now a conservative.  But this change took time.  One does not actively partake at the same time in integrationist and segregationist organizations, or, like Oswald, pro-Castro and anti-Castro, unless for covert reasons.)

            There are many other tidbits in this book that provoke thought, and illustrate that even with excellent agents on the ground, the FBI investigation of the Kennedy assassination was flawed, forged, and distorted to support the instantly fossilized presupposition that Oswald was the lone-nut assassin; to do this the FBI ignored, warped, and buried in trivia evidence to the contrary.

            Here are some revelations from Adams’ book, which is excellent for several reasons.  It includes a transcription of the tape in which Milteer on 9 November speaks to informant Somersett on how to kill the President using a  high-power rifle from an office building and then having a patsy arrested while the real culprits escape.  Milteer’s threats were taken seriously enough by the Miami Police Dept. that Kennedy’s itinerary was changed when he visited Miami on 18 Nov. 1963.  The FBI had a copy of the tape, but it did not push any change in the itinerary when Kennedy visited Dallas a few days later.  And when Oswald visited the FBI office to deliver a threatening note, the FBI did nothing to watch Oswald; it did nothing except destroy his note after the assassination!

            On the morning of 22 Nov. Milteer phoned William Somersett from Dallas who assured him that Kennedy would never again return to Miami.  On 23 Nov. the exuberant Milteer met Somersett in Jacksonville, assuring the informant that his prediction of how to take out the President was no guess work.  Receiving such reports from Somersett, the FBI decided to destroy the informant’s credibility.  3 April 1968 Somersett alerted authorities that Martin Luther King would be assassinated the next day.  The warning by the discredited informant was ignored.  King was killed the 4 April 1968.

            Adams produced a short book with numerous photographs and copies of official documents making the text even shorter.  It is repetitious.  There should have been an expanded index.  Yet, this is a book essential to all interested in the assassination of President John Kennedy.