Originally posted by piopat
The Spider's Web: The Texas School Book Depository and the Dallas ConspiracyBy William Weston
"There is a very large spider guarding this web of secrecy. I have entered other webs, but this one is different because the spider leaves the web and stalks its prey sometimes for many years."
Elzie Glaze [1]
Abstract:
Journalist Elzie Glaze compared the Texas School Book Depository to a spider that can leave its web and stalk its prey. This article posits the view that behind Glaze's metaphor was a weapons and narcotics smuggling operation moving under the guise of schoolbooks. Controlled by ultraconservatives, the depository harbored spies, who infiltrated left-wing organizations. It also had law enforcement agents, who monitored and controlled the drug traffic within the city of Dallas. These operatives acted at the instigation of the national security establishment. When President Kennedy threatened to break up that establishment, a plot developed to assassinate him. The schoolbook workers became involved in the plot, when they relocated into the seven-story building that overlooked a 120-degree turn at Elm and Houston Streets. The turn made the President an easy target, because it slowed his limousine down to a crawl. After the assassination, the victors of the coup imposed extra security measures at the schoolbook depository in order to protect ongoing smuggling activities.
Introduction
The pilot of a Dallas-bound commercial airliner made an announcement over the intercom: President Kennedy and Governor Connally were hit by gunfire while riding in a motorcade in Dallas. Among the passengers hearing the news was Joe Bergin, regional manager for the Scott Foresman Company in Dallas. His office was in the same building, where Lee Harvey Oswald purportedly fired a rifle from a sixth floor window.
On the sixth floor that day William Shelley and his crew of five men were adding new plywood to the old floor. How they failed to notice the lifting and moving of two dozen boxes, each weighing 55 pounds, to make the sniper’s nest at the southeast corner window has never been explained. Also unexplained is an incident after the assassination: Shelley spoke with Oswald just prior to the latter's escape in a Nash Rambler.
A veil of secrecy conceals the company that employed these men. The Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) moved into the seven-story, 411 Elm Street building during the summer of 1963, but exactly when is unknown. Ruth Paine, while driving on the freeway, saw the company name on a four-story warehouse and thought that Lee worked there, not realizing that a larger building, also within her view, was the place where he really worked. [2] Evidently a new sign was added later, but exactly when is unknown. The difficulty of obtaining specific details is of course due to the building's role as a shooting platform, but there is something else to consider. From clues derived from a variety of sources, company executives used schoolbooks to disguise shipments of firearms and narcotics. Although the picture is still unclear, the story of Joe Bergin adds an important piece to the puzzle. It is a story he never would have told himself, but thanks to his son, it is told here for the first time.
Background
Born in Alvin, Texas on August 12, 1899, Joe Lyons Bergin was the son of a Methodist minister, John W. Bergin, who in his early years traveled the preaching circuit with his wife and children. After four years as a pastor in Corsicana, John went to Georgetown, where he served as president of Southwestern University from 1935 to 1942. His son Joe went to the same university in the fall of 1918, where he excelled as a football player. After graduation, he taught history and athletics at the Lake Forest High School in Dallas. In 1930 he went to Greenville (50 miles northeast of Dallas), where he became the principal of a high school. Two years later, he won a four-year term as superintendent of the school district. People admired him for his intelligence and courteous manners. He was also a delightful conversationalist. As superintendent, he worked hard to raise the academic standards back up so that its secondary schools could regain their accreditation. For this achievement he won the gratitude of the citizens of Greenville. [3]
Joe’s wife Jewell was a strong, confident woman, musically talented with a splendid voice, who loved to sing and play the piano. In the backyard, she kept a beautiful garden with lots of iris, her favorite flower. In 1934, as president of the Eclecta Literary Club, she invited women from twenty-six other clubs to her home in order to found the City Federation of Women’s Clubs, an organization dedicated to advancing music, art, drama, dance, literature, and other cultural endeavors in the city of Greenville. In 1937 she served a one-year term as president of the federation. On top of this busy social life, Jewell had a baby – Joe, Jr., their only child – born on February 10, 1935.
Meanwhile, her husband was getting involved in law enforcement. During the Great Depression, many outlaws such as Machine Gun Kelly, Raymond Hamilton, and Bonnie and Clyde were finding Texas a congenial haven. To restore order, Governor Miriam Ferguson augmented the Texas Rangers, which at that time numbered 32 men with 2300 Special Rangers (volunteers who assisted the professionals without pay). Bergin enlisted as a private in the Special Rangers on January 3, 1934. On his oath of enlistment, he described himself as 5 feet 11 inches, fair to ruddy complexion, dark brown hair, blue eyes, 175 pounds, 34 years of age. He re-enlisted on August 9, 1935 and at this point the service records for the Special Rangers in the public domain ends. However, Bergin may have continued as a Ranger, since according to his obituary he was a “veteran of World War II,†and the Texas Rangers functioned as a military unit as well as a state police force.
The Drugs and Guns Connection
During the latter part of the 1930’s the Rangers shifted their focus from bank robbers to drug smugglers. Drug importation reached record levels, largely because the federal government secretly allowed Nationalist Chinese to import opium. The Chinese needed cash to pay troops and buy weapons in its fight against the Communist Chinese. A two-way traffic developed with guns leaving the United States to supply China, and drugs coming in to pay for them. To protect the Nationalist Chinese from political repercussions, the drug trafficking was blamed on the Red Chinese. According to Joseph Douglass, author of Red Cocaine, Mao Tse-Tung ordered the cultivation of opium on a grand scale. He had two objectives: obtaining exchange for needed supplies and "drugging the white region." [4] However Douglas Valentine, author of Strength of the Wolf, interviewed former Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) agents and gathered a lot of documentary evidence to present a stronger case that the primary culprit was Nationalist China.
The full article can be read here
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=16259&relPageId=7
