Here We Go Again: JFK Assassination, an Old Safe, and a Really Odd "Transcript"

Just when you thought it was safe to walk past the supermarket tabloid rack: new fuel for JFK assassination conspiracy theories.

About a dozen boxes turned up in an old safe on the 10th floor of a Dallas courthouse. Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins said that the boxes held:

• Personal letters to and from former District Attorney Henry Wade
• Letters to Jack Ruby
• A gun holster
• Official records from the Jack Ruby trial
• Clothing, probably belonging to Jack Ruby and Kennedy's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald

Except for the names, this would be just more of the sort of dusty, four-decades-old, stuff people find when an organization does housecleaning.

A really odd "transcript," that's probably a draft for a movie script, should jump-start more JFK conspiracy theories.

Although I'm sure the new set will be as imaginative as previous efforts, but I doubt that a USECT will emerge. After more than forty years, I'm still waiting for someone to come up with a good Unified Sixties Era Conspiracy Theory, or USECT, that ties together

• The JFK, RFK, and MLK assassinations
• Elvis
• Marilyn Monroe
• UFOs

Back to reality:

Odd Transcript in Old Dallas Safe

"Exclusive: Dallas County DA's office finds cache of JFK memorabilia" (February 17, 2008)

Dallas Morning News article excerpts

"But the curator of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza said the conversation could not have happened.

"Terri Moore, Mr. Watkins' top assistant, said she believes the transcript is part of a movie that Mr. Wade was working on with producers.

" 'It's not real. Crooks don't talk like that,' she said.

" 'If that transcript is true, then history is changed because Oswald and Ruby were talking about assassinating the president.' "

and

" Gary Mack, curator of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, laughed when told of the transcript. He has not seen it or any of the other documents found in the safe.

"The transcript resembles one published in a report by the Warren Commission, which investigated Kennedy's assassination and determined that Oswald was the lone gunman. The FBI determined that conversation – again between Oswald and Ruby, but this time about killing the governor – was definitely fake.

"Mr. Mack said that it's well documented that Oswald was in Irving the evening of Oct. 4, at a home where his wife was staying. He could not have been at Ruby's club.

"Mr. Mack suggested that the transcript in the Warren Commission report was probably used as a model for the one found in the district attorney's safe.

"The conversation published in the commission report was a fake account of a conversation between Ruby and Oswald on the same night at the Carousel Club. A now-deceased Dallas attorney 're-created' the conversation after Kennedy's assassination for authorities after he claimed he recognized Oswald in a newspaper photo as the man he saw talking to Ruby that night.

" 'The fact that it's sitting in Henry Wade's file, and he didn't do anything, indicates he thought it wasn't worth anything,' Mr. Mack said of the newly found transcript. 'He probably kept it because it was funny. It's hilarious. It's like a bad B movie.' "

JFK Assassination Conspiracy Theory Fodder Goes National, International

"Old JFK documents may stir controversy" Reuters (February 17, 2008)

"Lost JFK Assassination Documents Believed Found in Dallas Courthouse" FOXNews (February 18, 2008)