The Passing of Church Committee Witness Jim Gochenaur

He was one of the key witnesses in the JFK case

                             

We live in a media cocoon that is celebrity obsessed and dominated.  One which actually uses common people as foils for jokes and stunts: Jimmy Kimmel is a prime practitioner. If we did not live and breathe in such a world, the death of James Allen “Jim” Gochenaur would have merited some serious attention.  Which it did not get.

Gochenaur died last March 14 in Milwaukee.  He was very ill the last couple of years of his life. Due to a heart condition he had two stents installed and had to have two toes amputated. He was 77 and spent much of his life in Wisconsin. His name will be forever linked with that of Elmer Moore.  Moore was a Secret Service agent who was deeply embedded in the cover up surrounding the murder of President Kennedy. In fact, if not for Gochenaur it is quite probable that Moore and his malign activities would have never been fully exposed. In a secondary revelation, Jim also had some interesting information about Dallas FBI agent Jim Hosty.

In the early seventies, in February of 1970 to be exact, Jim was married and living in Seattle while teaching school.  He was preparing a project about the JFK assassination with his students.  But he needed some support about certain pieces of evidence i.e. the Mary Moorman photo facing the grassy knoll from the infield of Dealey Plaza. So he called the FBI office.  They, in turn, referred him to the Secret Service, specifically to Moore  because he had worked on the JFK case for many months back in 1963-64.

That first phone conversation ended up being a long, expansive and wandering one. It lasted about two hours. Moore thought Jim was a Warren Commission critic, but Jim assured him he was not.  All he wanted was a better version of the Moorman photo.  That launched Moore into a long spiel during which he claimed, among other things, that he was the lead investigator on the JFK case. Moore then added that this experience led him to become quite a student of political assassinations. So the two discussed the Lincoln case and the McKinley case.  An impressed Elmer Moore suggested they meet for lunch.  This was the first of three face to face meetings.

Before that first meeting, Jim read up on Moore and talked to the dean of Commission critics, the late Harold Weisberg. So he then asked Moore if he pressured Dr. Malcolm Perry into changing his story about the neck wound being one of entrance, something Perry said in public at a press conference on November 22^nd at Parkland Hospital.   Moore replied quite frankly with, “I was ordered to do that.”  Moore then added something even more revealing.  He had been asked to do so by the Inspector General of the Secret Service, Thomas J. Kelley. His orders were to induce Perry to say that he was not sure if the wound was an exit or an entrance.  So he and fellow Secret Service agent Roger Warner set up an office at Parkland Hospital, from which they  called in doctors and nurses and confronted them with the official autopsy report. With Perry it worked.  As Jim told Oliver Stone and myself, “I thought it was pretty interesting that he would admit to something that’s pretty close to a felony.”

But that was not all.  In May of 1971, there was a meeting at his office. Moore asked a rhetorical question:

Who killed Jack Kennedy? Well I’ll tell you who didn’t—it wasn’t the   Russians. I’ll tell you why: JFK was the Russians’ boy. He was giving away everything he could.  The man, for all intents and purposes, dare I say it?  Jim, I will say it: JFK was a traitor.

Gochenaur was taken aback that a Secret Service agent who was supposed to be finding out who killed Kennedy, 1) Apparently did not fully believe the Warren Report and 2.) Thought Kennedy was a Russian sympathizer.  When Jim asked him, well if Kennedy was a traitor then why he was not uncovered, Moore had another ready answer. No one could expose him since he was a darling of the media, his brother was Attorney General and his father was an appeaser, just as he was. Jim said when he heard this his head started to swim. He could not believe this man was a major part of the Commission’s inquiry.

Another question he asked Moore was if he investigated the attempt to kill Kennedy in Chicago, specifically Thomas Arthur Vallee, the apparent fall guy. Again, Moore was straightforward: ”Oh, Washington wouldn’t let me see the files on that.” When Jim then added, “Well, what about a Secret Service agent by the name of Abraham Bolden?” Moore virtually exploded. He stood up, pulled out his revolver and placed it on the table in front of Gochenaur. He leaned over the table and said, “Jim, tell me right now, who are you working for?” Jim said, no one.  He talked to Weisberg every once in awhile. This seemed to calm Moore and he asked if he was secretly recording him. Jim replied in the negative.

Bolden was the Chicago Secret Service agent who tried to inform the Commission about the prior attempt to kill Kennedy in the Windy City in early November of 1963. Moore now began to attack Bolden: “That goddamn lying nigger. We finally got him for bribery.”  Jim asked, “You got him?” Moore said “No Kelley and the chief got him.”  The chief refers to James Rowley who ran the Secret Service at the time of JFK’s murder and during its aftermath.

Gochenaur stated,  this was the only time that Moore seemed out of control.  Jim therefore concluded that the plot to kill Kennedy in Chicago, and Bolden’s attempt to expose it, were sensitive areas for the Secret Service. Thus the framing of Bolden. (See Edwin Black’s long essay under the title “The Chicago Plot to Kill JFK”.). But yet, Moore now seemed to trust Jim.  He said, “Look, I’ve got something to show you.” He swiveled around in his chair and, although Gochenaur could not see it, he seemed to be working a safe. He pulled out a rather cumbersome satchel. From which he pulled out a color JFK autopsy photo. Jim stated that this picture was unusual and he has never seen anything like it. It was taken from the right side of the face; the eye was swollen and black and blue.  The even more startling thing about this is that Moore had taken that photo out of what appeared to be a sheaf of other pictures.

He then opened a leather portfolio.  On the first page was a handwritten letter by Lyndon Johnson from 1964.  The salutation read, “To Elmer Moore, our best investigator.”  One of the most bothersome aspects of Jim’s later experience with the Church Committee concerned this collection of memorabilia. Because prior to his formal interview, he had written out a summary of his experience with Moore.  And he had mentioned this collection.  But yet when they called Moore in, they did not ask him to bring that satchel with him.

As part of the Secret Service inquiry into the death of Kennedy, Elmer Moore said he spent a lot of time with Jack Ruby’s family, particularly with Ruby’s sister Eva Grant. He would visit her at her home and one  time he saw a picture there which interested him. He asked her if he could take it: it was Jack sitting at a table at what appeared to be a nightclub in a dinner arrangement. He brought it back to the Secret Service office and showed it to Kelley.  The Inspector General replied, “Enough is enough. I’ll take it.  Don’ talk about it anywhere and don’t make any reports.”  Obviously, it would have been important to track down the other people in the picture.  Moore also said that he once had to shut Ruby up because he was talking too much about his shooting of Oswald.   Moore said the Secret Service did not want to include premeditation in the interview.

What could explain such behavior? First, Moore said that he was on leave the weekend of the assassination. But the following Monday he was ordered to Washington. Jim came to conclude that Moore was briefed there at length on the assassination and what he was to do and how he was to proceed. After Washington he was sent to Dallas. While there, he studied the Zapruder film and examined some black and white photos. He then went to Dealey Plaza with the autopsy report on Kennedy. Moore now concluded that for the official story to be true, the trajectory angles were all wrong.  Moore told Jim that this is why  he did not buy the later reenactments conducted by Commission lawyer Arlen Specter.

Its difficult enough to comprehend how Moore became one of the chief investigators into the Kennedy case.  But it then got worse. He became the aide-de-camp to Chief Justice Earl Warren on the Warren Commission. He somehow convinced Warren that he needed Secret Service protection while on the JFK case.  But as the record shows, Moore was there for more than just protection.  He admitted to having daily talks with Warren. Warren seems to have enjoyed these discussions and wished Moore to help “the Commission for an indefinite period to assist in its work.” Rowley went along with this relationship. He wrote in a memo that Moore was assigned to “furnish any service, assistance, and cooperation the Commission considers necessary.”  In fact, Moore actually handled exhibits and evidence.  He even showed Arlen Specter an autopsy photo. (James DiEugenio, The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today, . pp. 168-69)

Jim also met Carver Gayton when he was in Seattle. He and his then wife had a child and were looking for a larger rental.  They answered an ad that Gayton had run for a duplex. Gayton wanted to meet any possible tenants, so in mid-December of 1970 Jim met with Gayton and his wife. Jim happened to be practice teaching at the high school Gayton graduated from, Garfield High. So they established a rapport and Carver told Jim that he used to be an FBI agent. When Jim asked him where he was stationed, Carver said Kansas City and that is where he met James Hosty. Gayton asked Jim if he knew who that was. Jim said yes, he was involved in the Kennedy case.

Carver Gayton now said, “Oh yeah, and let me tell you something. Hosty told me that Oswald was a paid informant, a PSI.  But he wasn’t informing.” After this revelation, the couples bonded, even going out to dinner. Gayton said that the main reason he left the FBI was its racism, since he was African-American.  He related to Jim how on the day he graduated from the FBI academy, Director J. Edgar Hoover was there to congratulate the class.  But when he got to Carver, he stopped and put white gloves on before shaking his hand.

When informed by Jim about Gayton the former FBI agent  repeated to the Church Committee what he said to Gochenaur.  But he then took it back before the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Jim did a pre-interview for the Church Committee with investigators Paul Wallach and Dan Dwyer which lasted for about 20 minutes.  They then put him up at a hotel  and this is where Senator Richard Schweiker interviewed him with Wallach and Dwyer present.

But that is not all who was in attendance. An Army major entered the room.  And then two naval officers came in and sat directly behind him. The interview lasted for about 90 minutes. And here is the capper:  although Jim and several persons have tried to obtain the interview, it is not available. Further, one would think that given his information, Gochenaur would have been a star witness for the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), which followed the Church Committee. Not the case.  That Committee only did an informal phone interview with him. Not only was there no formal deposition, there was not even a sworn affidavit. But beyond that, the HSCA did not even know Gochenaur appeared before the Church Committee!

Gochenaur was one of the most important persons involved in the Kennedy assassination. If used properly, his testimony could have unraveled the Secret Service cover up about the case, and perhaps even more.  Oliver Stone and myself were fortunate to feature him in JFK Revisited. And it is from the transcript of that interview that  much of this essay is taken. After that film was released, Jim belatedly raised his profile and he also did more interviews.  I take this opportunity to salute him upon his passing. Equated with his importance, his recognition took much too long to attain.