Time and again,
police and prosecution officials stated their complete satisfaction that Oswald
was the assassin. As their investigation
uncovered one piece of alleged evidence after another, the results were broadcast to
the public.
The ACLU told the public that "Oswald's trial would have been nothing but a hollow formality."[ix]
Oswald's ties to the ACLU smeared the organization and injured its credibility in its attempts to defend Oswald after his death. A bad situation became worse when the ACLU chair was too cute by half, saying that since Oswald's application had never processed by ACLU headquarters, he was not an actual "member" before his death. [x] Oswald made the ACLU look bad after his death -- it's hard to imagine how the group would have looked if Oswald had lived.
Bill Harvey had a bird's eye view into John Abt, the left-wing Quakers, and the Communist Party USA
Remember
that Oswald turned away other lawyers to hold out for the attorney John Abt,
counsel for the Communist Party USA. This is a real tragedy, because if Oswald had told his story to a lawyer, the lawyer would have been free to tell the public after Oswald was killed. Why was Oswald so stubborn on this point?
Apparently because Mr. Abt had a lot of experience in defending clients who had been framed by the government.
Oswald may have been totally sincere, but -- as with his joining the ACLU in
the last days before the assassination -
it looks to me like Oswald was given very damaging advice from Michael Paine and maybe others.
Who was John Abt? Abt had a fascinating background of his own.
In the 1930s, John Abt was a member of the Ware Group, a network of young left-wing lawyers such as Alger Hiss and economists Nathaniel Weyl working in FDR's Agricultural Adjustment Administration. Their original leader was Hal Ware, the leading agricultural expert for the CPUSA. What began as a discussion group turned into an Soviet espionage network over time.
When Ware died in an auto accident in 1935, Abt married Ware's widow Jessica Smith, while Whittaker Chambers took over the leadership of the Ware Group. Norman Thomas, the perennial Socialist Party candidate, conducted the wedding of Abt and Smith. Smith, a Swarthmore graduate, had signed up in the 20s to work with the Quaker mission to address famine in the Soviet Union. Smith and Ruth Paine were in the same social circles. Not only were both of them active in the left-wing political wing of the Quakers, but Ruth's family had been long-time supporters of Norman Thomas.
The Ware Group had a period of inactivity for several years after Chambers left in 1938 to join the Quakers and write for Time magazine, only to regain momentum when they came together around a statistician with the War Production Board named Victor Perlo. John Abt enlisted an upper-class woman, Elizabeth Bentley, into the espionage activities of what was now known as the Perlo Group. Abt left the group shortly afterwards.
A big-time alcoholic, Bentley became a double agent. She blew the whistle on the members of the Perlo Group. The Justice Department used her revelations as an excuse to issue indictments in July 1948 against the leaders of the Communist Party USA, with Bentley's identity blown by the newspapers. (Lauren Kessler, Clever Girl (HarperCollins, 2003), pp. 156-159.)
In the ensuing uproar, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) went into session the day after Bentley testified before a Senate committee. Bentley sang like a canary, exposing the identities of Abt and the members of the Perlo Group as part of a communist espionage ring. Chambers then came forward and backed up Bentley's claims, adding the names of the Ware Group members and Alger Hiss in particular. At this point, Hiss had gone on to become one of the moving forces of the United Nations and was the new president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. (Kessler, pp. 179-181)
The short-term result was the Hiss-Chambers drama during the heat of the 1948 election, and the HUAC congressman Dick Nixon got the exposure he needed to mount a national career in politics. The long-term result was to fuel a period of paranoia now known as the McCarthy era.
Bentley's FBI interrogator from 1945 to 1947 was the future chief of the CIA's assassinations team - William Harvey. By 1963, Harvey had enjoyed for many years a bird's view of John Abt, left-wing Quaker activity, and the Communist Party USA. Undiagnosed complications from exploratory surgery that revealed an inoperable and virulent cancer took Bentley's life at age 55, ten days after the JFK assassination.
Paine superficially resembled Oswald, and had a provocative streak of his own
Besides convincing Lee to join the
ACLU, Paine had a provocative streak similar to Oswald. Shortly after meeting Lee, Michael told the
FBI that he began to frequent Luby's Cafeteria across from Southern Methodist
University after Sunday services in April-May 1963. Paine enjoyed engaging in political
conversations or debates with students, taking a pro-Castro, pro-Cuba,
pro-peace-with-the-USSR viewpoint.
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