Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

An interesting thing has surfaced; at least: interesting to me. John Hankey, longtime member of the OIC, has released a new video in which he refers to Deputy Roger Craig reporting that he saw Dallas cop Roy Vaughn arrest a man who came running out of the Dal-Tex building shortly after the assassination. And, it's something that Roger Craig told to Jim Garrison and which Garrison repeated. 

Speculation has arisen, from Hankey and others, that that man was George H.W. Bush. Nothing came of his arrest. He was reportedly turned over to Dallas detectives who took him in, but no charges were ever filed, and no police record was ever made.  

So, this is yet another thing for which Roger Craig is the only source, and I admit that that is troubling, and especially so because Officer Roy Vaughn was a young man at the time, age 29, and he lived a long time, and as far as I know, he NEVER spoke of it. He testified to the Warren Commission, but not about that; only about what happened on November 24. 

But, why do people think that the guy was Bush? It's because he identified himself as "an independent oil operator from Houston" and it was typical for Bush to describe himself that way. On the very same day, November 22, Bush made a phone call to the FBI from Tyler, Texas in which he identified himself with the Zapata Off-shore Drilling Company. There is a written record of it. 

I realize that that is not the exact same wording, but it is the exact same meaning as "independent oil operator from Houston." 

Russ Baker, in his Bush family expose,  Family of Secrets, claimed that Bush made that call (about some Houston college student who supposedly spoke of wanting to kill Kennedy) just to create an alibi for himself.  It's a little over an hour and a half drive from Dallas to Tyler. So, did Bush hop in a car and race to Tyler just to make that call? But, since it was only a call, isn't it also possible that someone else made the call for him?  

But, there is something else to consider: Bush was a lot more than an independent oil operator from Houston; he was a candidate for the U.S. Senate, and running against a guy who was riding in the JFK motorcade with LBJ, Senator Ralph Yarborough! It was late November 1963, and I read on the United States Senate website, that Bush announced his candidacy for Senate in 1963. 

"In 1963, Bush announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for the Senate to oust the incumbent liberal Democrat Ralph Yarborough."

Now, I realize that he could have announced it after November 22 and still been in 1963. There was still 5 weeks of 1963 left to announce it. But, we don't know when he announced it. At least, I don't know. What if he announced it before November 22? That would mean that he was already a Senatorial candidate on November 22. And one thing is for sure: whether he announced it that early or not, you know he must have had a lot of things in the works for it, and a lot of people had to know that he was about to announce, if he hadn't done so already.  

And he did quite well. He won the Republican primary and the run-off, and he only lost to Yarborough in a very close race.  So surely, he had a lot in the works before November, 22, 1963. 

But, Bush isn't the guy I want to talk about. The guy I want to talk about is Officer Roy Vaughn. You know that he is very important, historically. He is famous for being the police officer who, not deliberately, but negligently, let Jack Ruby enter the police garage through the Main Street ramp. But, Vaughn adamantly denied it his whole life, until his last breath. He said there was no way Jack Ruby got past him. And I believe him. I don't doubt him for a second. Why doubt him? There is no reason to doubt him. Here he is talking about it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WePowzq1nmE&feature=youtu.be

Listen to Roy Vaughn say: "Jack Ruby did not come down that ramp."  Listen to how he says it. Listen to the conviction in the man's voice. 

Roy Vaughn was right, except there was a qualification he needed to add: Jack Ruby did not come down that ramp- on his watch, on Roy Vaughn's watch. There was a time gap. Jack Ruby came down that ramp before Roy Vaughn got there. Roy Vaughn was a patsy. Roy Vaughn was set up; used; exploited. He was picked, targeted, and railroaded to be the guy who was going to take the blame for the security breech that got Oswald killed. He is the only person in the entire Dallas PD to receive a reprimand for what happened to Oswald. 

I'm telling you that it was all planned in advance. Roy Vaughn was the sacrificial lamb. 

Jack Ruby got there earlier, and it makes sense that he would have. He said he got up early that morning. And the only thing he did before leaving for Western Union was get dressed and eat breakfast. So, why should it have taken him until after 11 to get there? He got there earlier, about an hour earlier. He was drugged. He was dopey. He was in a highly susceptible mental state- susceptible to suggestion. And remember: he was a guy who had a pathological devotion to the Dallas Police. I say that because it was so extreme. Was it part of some MK-ULTRA indoctrination he was subjected to? 

If you read Ruby's description of the scene at the top of the ramp, it differs from Vaughn's. Furthermore, RUBY KNEW VAUGHN. They had met several times. Once, Vaughn had forgiven a traffic violation as a courtesy to Ruby. Ruby spoke of seeing an officer on foot at the top of the ramp, but he never ID'd him as Vaughn. He said he didn't know him. That officer must have been someone else.

So, Ruby got to the ramp, and they were waiting for him. He was allowed to walk down the ramp. He was probably coaxed to walk down the ramp.  And, they were waiting for him at the bottom of the ramp too. He was jumped and hustled upstairs, and that is where they told him that he shot Oswald. He had no memory of doing it. He had no intention of doing it. He had no expectation of even seeing Oswald. He didn't have the slightest impulse to kill Oswald. But, he accepted that he did it for one reason, and one reason only: because they told him that he did. 

It was reported by Dr. Fred Bieberdorf that the garage was cleared that morning, at 9:45, that he himself was ordered out. And, it was quite a while before they started letting reporters and cameramen back in. Roy Vaughn had been called back to the station by Lt. Rio "Sam" Pierce, and he was told to wait at some dispatch area, where there was coffee. So, he waited there and enjoyed some coffee. And there were other officers there whom he chatted with. And eventually, Pierce showed up and told him to go to the garage and report to Sergeant Dean who ordered him to guard the Main Street ramp. I maintain that was after Ruby was tucked away on the 5th floor. 

So, my contention is that Roy Vaughn was deliberately set up to take the fall for the failure to protect Oswald. But, my question is: why him? Why Roy Vaughn? 

Well, if Roy Vaughn was involved in arresting George HW Bush, which was something they didn't want him talking or inquiring about, maybe they thought he was someone who was going to need to be controlled. Maybe they thought by making him the fall guy for the Oswald shooting, it would give him a more pressing problem than worrying about that independent oil operator from Houston. 

The point is that, until today, I never asked myself: Why Vaughn? It had to be someone. Someone had to be accused of slipping up. So why Vaughn? Why'd they choose him to be the fall guy? 

He was young, and he was low-ranking, which was good, but there had to be plenty of others in that category. It seems like getting someone a little on the slow side would have been desirable, but that can't apply to Vaughn because he went on to become the Chief of Police of Midlothian, Texas for 10 years, and then a Municipal Court Judge in Midlothian for 13 years, (and he wasn't even a lawyer). He lived until 2010. 

So, they definitely did not pick the weakest link. What was needed was someone like Jack Ruby, who upon being told that he did something, even something horrendous, accepted it just because he was told. That certainly didn't apply to Vaughn. There had to be someone more submissive and supplicative than he was that they could have used. So, did they decide on Vaughn just to burden him with something after what happened with Bush?   

Vaughn was given a polygraph exam, which he passed with flying colors, that he didn't see Jack Ruby or let him enter the garage.  

Look: the whole case that Roy Vaughn slipped up is ridiculous; it is totally without merit. Three other police officers: Lt. Pierce, Sergeant Maxie, and Sergeant Putnam were supposedly also there when Ruby entered. They didn't see Jack Ruby either, so how likely is it that Ruby gave them all the slip? And what sense does it make to heap all the blame on just one? And there was also a former officer there, N. J. Daniels, and he didn't see Ruby either, so that's 5. And there was a 6th guy across the street, Sergeant Dan Flusche, and he also said that he never saw Ruby. 

It has been speculated, even by some who support the official story, that Ruby must have entered a different way, such as through an alley, but it's ridiculous. Why would Ruby lie about how he got in when he was willing to accept responsibility for shooting Oswald? And how could he know that Lt. Pierce was there in a squad car and another officer on foot unless he saw them? Ruby said he did not know the other officer's name, but he did know Roy Vaughn.   

So, Jack Ruby was telling the truth, and so was Roy Vaughn.  And the truth was that Ruby reached the top of the ramp much earlier than 11:17.  Pierce must have been there at the time, alone in the car, with another officer (not Vaughn) on foot, and they are the ones Ruby saw.  Ruby was already skirted away up on the 5th floor when the shooting spectacle took place in the garage on national television, with FBI Agent James Bookhout playing the role of Jack Ruby, wearing a low-riding hat, and NEVER captured facing the camera, even though there were cameras galore, shooting from every angle.