General Edwin Walker, Oswald & the Kennedys

tonight what i'm going to be talking about is kind  of relevant if you think about the discussion of   red versus blue or right versus left a lot of the  origins of the new left the new rights come out   of the 1960s and tied to that of course is the  reaction a lot of americans had to the cold war   all of this was tied together and one of the more  interesting personalities to come out of this and   kind of an unusual example of the new right if you  will would be major general retired edwin walker   so what's that's what we're going to talk about  tonight what i would like to do is kind of trace   his life story a little bit and you can see some  of the development of the mindset that would   set itself in some ways against many of the more  prominent politicians of the day and most clearly   that's going to be the case of john f kennedy his  vice president lyndon b johnson and his brother   attorney general robert f kennedy or bobby and  the real the relationship that we're going to see   between walker and the kennedys well let's  just say there's no love lost between them   and you can kind of see that from pretty  early on but walker himself was born in 1909   in center point texas that's kind of center  central texas hill country area he was a west   point graduate he served in world war ii and  then he also served in the korean conflict   now his experiences in korea are going to shape  somewhat his beliefs regarding the cold war   the nature of communism the potential threat  of communism you can see it with concerns   about brainwashing which was something that they  talked about even at the time uh the picture there   obviously is from the manchurian candidate from  1962 when they're hearkening back to the exact   same thing the concern that there were soldiers  fighting in korea who were being brainwashed   into supporting the north korean communist  perspective and walker saw elements of this   he was concerned by this and he was concerned by  the what he saw as a perceived lack of patriotism   and as he described it later he talked to a  gentleman by the name of dan smoot who had a   news program called the dan smoot report and he  told dan smoot that the problem he had with korea   was not just that the men under his command were  lacking training but they lacked ideals and that   was the concern he saw a lot of the cold war for  him was going to be ideological on a grand scale   but that's what he kind of came out of and  then when he returned to the united states   time was going on and he eventually became  the head the commander over the forces   of the federalized arkansas national guard in  1957 when they were trying to make sure that   the little rock nine the nine high school students  african-american high school students were allowed   to enter central high school and actually attend  classes so if you came in a little bit earlier   before the talk began they showed some silent  footage of him in little rock and there's a   still photo up there that you can kind of get an  idea about but when he was in charge in little   rock as it turned out later he talked about how  he had completely disagreed with his orders he   did not believe that what eisenhower had done  was correct he did not believe that eisenhower   should federalize the national guard they  shouldn't be moving in a federal capacity at all   in fact the way he put it at one point was  in recent years special interest groups   have prevailed upon civilian leaders to employ  our military forces on non-military adventures   and that's how he kind of perceived this has he  put it a little bit more bluntly after little   rock he basically said i led forces on the wrong  side by the order of a president in 1957 and 1958   so he saw the whole thing as coming from  the wrong direction now part of that has   to do with the fact that he came from a much more  conservative background and coming from texas in   that time period the democratic party is going  to skew very conservative particularly in the   area of civil rights and one of the things  that walker was concerned with was the idea   of federal compulsion to force integration and  that was what he primarily had a problem with   he saw it as being too much federal control and  that's the kind of thing that over time he would   see as being much more dictatorial but while  he was in little rock he actually met a man by   the name of robert welch who was the founder of  an organization called the john birch society   and the john birch society was a fairly popular  conservative group when i say conservative think   more like far right than just rather right but  they were the kind of people who tended to believe   and robert welch put this out in some of his  publications that washington dc was filled with   people who were basically communist forces working  to bring down the united states from within   and in fact one of his earlier books he argued  that one of the people trying to bring down the   u.s was president dwight d eisenhower  who was actually a moderate republican   so john birch tended to go a little bit  further right than most people tended to see   and it helped an extremist label to stick on  that society but by the time you get into the   1960s for example both john birch society  groups such as i'll mention this one later   the national indignation convention i just like  the name honestly and others like that attorney   general robert f kennedy eventually labeled groups  such as these not just a tremendous tremendous   danger but also called them vigilantes who as  he put it sow seeds of suspicion and distrust   by making false or irresponsible charges which  is probably one reason of many why walker had   problems with the kennedy brothers but what  happened was he kind of felt himself in sync   with the john birch society became  probably eventually one of its more   well-known members because he found a voice  through john birch for his own concerns but in fact when all this was going on he  was so disturbed by his role in the using the   national guard in 1957 he did consider for a while  resigning from the army because as he put it you   know as the fifth column conspiracy of communists  working in the us government and the influence   in the u.s which he said minimized or nullified  the effectiveness of as you put in my ideas and   principles but instead he ended up getting moved  to germany and in germany he was in charge of the   24th division and it was there that his background  in korea and his concern with the potential fifth   column in the united states kind of went an an  extra step it was there he created a program   designed to protect soldiers prepare them for what  might come their way in terms of communist threats   but basically it came out of something that was  a directive of the national security council   what they had encouraged people to do was  they put together a directive encouraging   training in history and in politics for federal  for army navy armed forces and so that they could   be better prepared for that sort of thing now  eventually this directive would be rescinded   by secretary of defense robert s mcnamara but  basically walker took that idea and kind of ran   with it you ended up with a program that became  known as the the pro-blue program and it was   designed to provide as he put it a moral and a  political foundation for his men and he called   it pro-blue he said because blue he believed stood  for loyalty and that's what he wanted he wanted   loyal men who knew who they stood for and were  able to fight for the united states as they should   but the thing is as time went on there were  people who looked into the pro blue program   and were somewhat concerned with what they saw now  one group that did this was a group of journalists   for a magazine a newspaper called the overseas  weekly this was kind of admittedly a rag um in   germany and elsewhere that they just kind of  provided interesting news stories for the the   armed forces where they're stationed overseas what  have you but they wrote an article about the pro   blue program where they pointed out that a good  portion of it seemed to be tied to the john birch   society in fact a lot of the material seemed to  be lifted straight from the john birch society and   then they said even more than that he was pushing  a much more conservative perspective on his men   to the point of even telling them who to vote  for now part of that had to do with the fact   that he actually provided a 1960 voters guide  from a conservative group to kind of give them   an idea of what to expect that kind of thing so  all of this was put into the newspaper article   and as time went on there were other  things brought to like how he had mentioned   he had called eleanor roosevelt and harry  s truman both pinkos which of course meant   that they may not have been red communists but  at least they had that pink tinge to them and   they con they suggested that maybe he was going  a little bit too far with his loyalty program   well the army called him in to discuss a lot of  this and when they questioned him eventually they   decided the best thing they could do was disband  pro blue in may of 1962 and then admonished walker   himself the next month now as for walker's  perspective the only reason this happened   he said the reason pro boo was eliminated was  because as he argued john f kennedy was trying   to cater to the premier of the soviet union  nikita khrushchev so again you can start seeing   the ties there between walker and the kennedys  but he challenged this as censorship he said you   had no right to do this he actually left the army  rejected his military pension and moved to dallas so from there that's where his career really began  to take off he published a lot of things such as   one of the pictures over here if i can get the  laser this right here censorship and survival   talked about what he was planning on doing  when he moved out as a civilian he said it   will be my purpose now as a civilian to attempt  to do what i found it no longer possible to do   in uniform then he took it further and saying war  has been declared every man is a soldier now the   war he's talking about is fighting communism  from within the united states and that's his   concern and where does he do this well in dallas  the picture there on the left is his house it's   on tr it was on turtle creek boulevard the  pictures from a couple of years later 1963   actually he planted the u.s flag upside down on  his front lawn he did this primarily because you   fly your flag upside down as a sign of distress  his distress in this case actually had to do with   the presence of the united states in the united  nations but that's where he settled in and kind   of put down roots and well why did he go to dallas  why texas well first of all he was from texas but   he was going to use this in his battle against the  forces of communism within the u.s as he put it   in amarillo in january of 62 he said texas is  a vital portion of this nation it is one of   50 states but its influence in leadership are  far beyond that of a single state among 50 our   traditions and heritage are those of independence  and courage travis stood firm at the alamo for sam   houston's victory at san jacinto these were the  terms of survival that established our heritage   these are not the terms that washington dc has  now devised if you hear what he's saying or the   ones that divided korea at the 38th parallel  he saw texas as the perfect example to strike   out against the forces of darkness and move the  united states back in a more positive direction   so what he decided to do of course was  to run for governor in 1962. now he ran   as a democrat this was not surprising given the  time period pretty much it was assumed for a long   time of course in texas history if you won the  democratic primary you might as well just say   you've won the whole thing because there's not  much of a competition beyond that so he ran as   a democrat for that capacity he also tended to  be much more conservative in areas such as the   area of civil rights which plenty of democrats  in texas also did but he ran as a democrat   and he put it i'm fighting in and through the  party of jefferson where the greatest number   of texas patriots can express themselves on  the basic and vital issue of national survival   and where we can meet head-on opponents of  the jeffersonian states rights tradition   and that's what he's taking to the people now  when he ran he actually tried to get clearance   from a lot of fairly well-known politicians he  went to texas senator john tower for example   for his blessing john tower told him not to  run he went to the south carolina senator strom   thurmond who also told him not to run which is  kind of ironic if you think about the fact that   strom thurmond actually ran as the dixiecrat  candidate in 1948 he was telling walker not to   run that tells you something right there he also  had wanted to meet with barry goldwater who would   eventually in 1964 of course run for president  but barry goldwater refused to meet with him   as far as we can gather as primarily because  he didn't want to be associated with walker   but he had a lot of people telling him don't do  this but he did it anyway and he had all sorts   of interesting competition uh what he considered  to be some of the most interesting competition was   probably john connelly who if you don't mind the  spoiler ends up becoming the course democratic   candidate but he labeled him as lyndon johnson's  hand-picked candidate for him that was the biggest   problem that johnson had even recommended  him other people had gone even further than   that one guy named jay evats haley who would  eventually be known for writing a book called   a texan looks at linden from a very antagonistic  perspective called john connelly lyndon's boy but   walker became one of six candidates in the  democratic primary for the governor and during the   campaign he was willing to tell you who he stood  against pretty easily dwight d eisenhower who   was of course no longer president john f kennedy  lyndon b johnson the state department the supreme   court of the united states and nelson rockefeller  who wasn't really going anywhere although there   was some consideration that he might end up being  a presidential candidate but of all of these   in particular he was going to focus in on kennedy  johnson and their administration he was very   concerned that kennedy was as he put it prosecutor  and judge of all of walker's activities walker saw   himself very much in this time period as being  the target of a vast communist conspiracy trying   to root him out before he could shine a light on  their nefarious deeds and he thought that kennedy   was in charge of a lot of this but worse than  that one of the biggest concerns that walker had   as a former soldier was that kennedy as he put his  plan to place all armed forces and weapons under   the united nations that was his biggest concern  if you bring it in to a multilateral organization   like the un the u.s no longer has control and that  was one of the biggest problems he saw as a result   both john f kennedy and lyndon b johnson who he  said supported all of this he called them the   potomac pretenders and challenged them at  almost every step he did the same with johnson   talked about how johnson double-crossed every true  conservative and even every ultra liberal in texas   and if johnson was going to try to challenge  him on elections well he said well johnson had   done more to destroy free elections than any man  alive if you remember what happened in 1948 when   landslide linden managed to win way to the senate  by a mere 87 votes that's probably what he was   referring to but again made it very clear that's  who he's running against not so much the other   gubernatorial candidates as kennedy johnson  and well bobby kennedy who he mentioned in one   interesting throw out phrase how kennedy  bobby kennedy had slurred texas history   there's i don't know what he meant  by that i'm kind of curious but   needless to say kennedy's were the problem in a  lot of this stuff now while he was running for   governor of course you go out you have all your  press conferences you make friends with the press   he had a really unique way of doing that  for example he had a press conference at the   austin municipal airport in march of 62 and  you had plenty of newspaper journalists and   photojournalists taking pictures and what have  you and he told them to stop and they told him   well we have the right to take your picture he  said yes and i have the right to tell you not to and in fact one of his supporters who was there  actually pointed out to one photographer said   well if you want a face full of fists just take  another picture so the relationship with the press   was shall we say unique happened again when  he went to washington actually in april of 62   to speak before a senate committee after he had  spoken a journalist by the name of thomas v kelly   actually approached him and asked him why another  person who had spoken the leader of the american   nazi party george lincoln rockwell had praised  walker so fully and well walker's response was   to punch him and give him a black eye which kelly  was nice enough not to press charges but this was   not unusual for walker he had a very contentious  relationship with the press in fact at one point   it was in 1963 a year later he went to a luncheon  held by the dallas women's group called the public   affairs luncheon club where george wallace the  segregationist governor of alabama was speaking   and walker was in attendance and a cameraman by  the name of george phoenix decided to come up and   try to get a silent some silent footage of walker  watching and what ended up happening is that   walker stood up grabbed phoenix threw him up  against a table full of plates knocked all the   plates over proceeded to pummel him in the back  and then went and sat back down and apparently a   few people applauded but not members of the public  affairs luncheon club because that's not showing   a lot of decorum but he had let's say an unusual  relationship with the press as a result of this   but even with shall we say a colorful campaign  he still came in sixth out of six candidates it   was an interesting thought it didn't pan out  quite the way he had hoped it actually would   but by the fall of 1962 he had a new focus  what happened in the fall of 1962 is that   james meredith was going to be trying to  enroll at ole miss in oxford mississippi   and there was a lot of contention and debate  around the process of integrating college campuses   particularly across the south but in september  of 1962 james meredith was trying to matriculate   and attorney general bobby kennedy sent in 127  u.s marshals 316 members of the border patrol   and 77 members of the federal bureau of prisons  to come in and make sure that meredith could go in   but walker went along too and what walker  wanted to do he said he was in mississippi   to show opposition to tyranny like he had  seen in little rock he wanted as he put it to   encourage massive peaceful protest against federal  tyranny and he urged other people to do the same   as he put it i am certainly not in sympathy  with any efforts with forced integration which   seems to be the issue at present so he made his  point very clear what he was attempting to do   but word began to spread as everything was kind of  coming together in oxford that whether this was a   rumor or not there were some armed men who seemed  to be following the call of walker which was   pretty clarion and they're making their way  to oxford and long story short what happened   was a riot students were using bricks  rocks sticks all sorts of other things   and walker was present in the midst of all of  this now the question is how involved was he   and there's some debate as to how involved he was  the upi reporter who was present said walker was   actually calling for peaceful protest was standing  out of the way and was not involved the ap   reporter disagreed so there were people on  both sides saying whatever they wanted to   see but eventually what happened and you  can see it from the picture on the slide   well walker ended up being arrested at the  encouragement of bobby kennedy for rebellion   insurrection and seditious conspiracy but  where they handed handled it from there   made life a little bit more interesting  because he didn't just have him arrested   he put him under basically a 90-day  observation and mental examination   there was some concern that bobby kennedy  had that walker might not be quite as   stable as he should be this was not the first time  anybody had suggested this when he was in germany   there had been some question if he maybe had a  brain tumor or something along those lines but   they threw him into basically a federal prison  reserve for psychiatric and mental prisoners   and that's where things started getting  interesting because the whole question was   shouldn't he be having just a regular jury trial  why are they putting on trial for his sanity   and there was a huge debate about this  representative bruce alger who represented dallas   in the house of representatives at this point  asked congress to protect walker's constitutional   rights including the right to have bail and legal  representation challenged him being put into this   federal prison on at this level and across  the country he became kind of the cause celeb   for a lot of what was going on there was a group  of women for example in los angeles called the   minute women you would see organizations like  this across the country and the minute women   sent in petitions protesting this type of  psychiatric treatment simply for what they   consider to be a conservative position the dallas  morning news noted that the only person in oxford   who got this sort of treatment was walker himself  and even the aclu made a statement at one point   which tells you something right there so this  was a huge hue and cry over what had happened   and eventually it was determined that there was  nothing wrong with walker and they eventually   exonerated him and sent him home and when he made  his way back well this is the picture when he got   back about 250 people met his plane at love  field with you know confederate flags flying   and signs like walker for president in 64 which  i think would have been fascinating i would have   been intrigued but singing for he's a jolly  good fellow and everything else and he's back   and he was kind of the immediate hero of the  day because of what had happened at ole miss now after that he kind of picked up steam a little  bit he ended up linking forces with a guy by the   name of billy james hargis now hargis was a  fundamentalist preacher from tulsa who founded   in 1947 a group called the christian crusade and  in the spring of 1963 they basically rented a bus   and went on a six-week tour around the country  to have you kind of mutual support or mutual   admiration what you want to call it bringing  in some money splitting the profits but they   called it operation midnight ride kind  of being a throwback to the idea of the   midnight ride of paul revere to wake people up  and alert them to the situation in the country   and they thrived on controversy when they did  this because of course we mentioned his love   affair with the press it continued when he was  working alongside billy james hargis in fact it   got to the point where they would deliberately  have press conferences before they actually held   their meetings so that the journalists could say  something and they could focus all this attention   on the controversy created there and then they  would have their meeting but apparently it did   reasonably well at least he was pleased with  the results but once he returned home he got   back to work because of course it's going to  be april of 1963 and well your taxes are due   well what ended up happening was on april  10th he was busy at home and on turtle   creek boulevard doing his taxes when suddenly  the bullet hit the window frame of his window   went through the far wall fragments of the bullet  hit his forearm cutting him there plaster and   paint from the window frame ended up landing in  his hair eventually they found the slug in the   next room having gone completely through the wall  resting on a pile of pamphlets that he had there   so somebody had shot at him they just didn't know  who and that was the big question and when they   pulled out the slug the the bullet itself was  so damaged it was really hard to tell at first   what was going on with it eventually they did  some testing that it seemed to indicate it was   what's called a carcano bullet but that's not  going to have a whole lot of significance yet   it was a long time trying to work through a lot of  this stuff but in the interview that they did show   if you noticed before before the talk he talked  about the enemy within this country calling for   the end to the huac and to the local police and  to the military the enemy within that was striking   out against him in his own home and he saw himself  as a target of all of these forces now he did   close out the interview with a bit of a laugh  he cut it short because he said you know if i   don't actually finish my taxes as he put it bobby  kennedy is going to throw me in federal jail again   so he went on with his life but the  question was well who shot at him   this was clearly an assassination attempt  that's certainly how he saw it so where did   that go from there well it's kind of hard to  tell it was going to take some time to get to   the point where people realize what exactly  was tied in there but before that by 1963   the far right in dallas had really ramped up in  a major way and walker was a big part of that   and you can see it among other things in what  they called u.s day in october of 1963. what   happened is the 24th of october is united nations  day and in 1963 they were going to bring in   these ambassador to the united nations adlai  stevenson to speak at dallas memorial auditorium   and he was going to talk about the united  nations and how we're working together to create   you know a better future for everybody well this  rubbed walker the wrong way for a variety of   reasons he hated the un as the picture with the  flag flying upside down in front of his house   should indicate but his big concern of course was  that it's multilateral multilateral forces mean   no autonomy for the united states and since the  soviet union is a member of the security council   that means that they exercise a lot of  sway over what the u.n is going to be doing   as a result he would say the united nations was  atheistic and as he put it asiatic he said it was   as he put it our tower of babel and then he of  course tied it into the kennedys because that's   what you do un one world new frontiersmen have  conspired in the liquidation of our constitutional   government he said by for and of the people they  are buying and selling the nation now clearly the   new frontier reference is that to kennedy who is  of course championing the new frontier in american   domestic policy but he decided to join forces  with an organization that i mentioned before the   national indignation convention which i like just  for the name alone it was founded in 1961 after   the united states air force had been training  yugoslavian pilots from behind the iron curtain   in fort worth and this was of great concern  to them and you could see how the u.n might be   orchestrating some of this to their mind so walker  decided to create in response to un day us day   and he was going to hold it in the same auditorium  memorial auditorium the day prior to un day and   when he got in there he stirred up the crowd he  suggested that they should go and hear adlai speak   and get and challenge him where he was and see  where you go from there and well apparently when   he was talking about this stuff there was at least  one person in the audience of note to us for later   a gentleman by the name of lee harvey oswalt was  actually in the audience during us day listening   to walker speak told his wife he attended an  ultra-right meeting as he put it well that all   kind of comes together these are all puzzle pieces  but what happened was the next day they had un day   adlai stevenson came and was trying to speak but a  lot of people who supported what walker was doing   poured into memorial auditorium tried to shout  him down they brought air horns they made it very   difficult for him to speak and then when he was  finished as he was trying to make his way out to   the car at least one person a college student spit  at him and then if you look at the picture there   he had a placard dropped on his head by the woman  if you look at her the picture of hers over to the   right the coral lacey fredrickson mrs fredericks  in there later said that her hands slipped   and she didn't mean to actually clunk him in the  head quite the way she did but that basically fed   a lot of the reputation dallas had at this point  for being a little more than right wing and this   is in october of 1963. this is one month before  john f kennedy was planning on coming to dallas   to try to work on ways to make nice with texas  democrats who had a major problem with him for   some of the same reasons walker did trying  to prep for the 1964 presidential election   so all of this was coming together at the  same time so when you get to november of 1963   when kennedy came in one of the things that met  him was a lot of the same flyer the wanted for   treason flyer which you see on the slide  walker himself did not create this flyer   but he would he knew the gentleman who did  and he had worked with them in the past   so there were some ties they they were kind of of  same mind and so there's some indication that he   was at least aware of the flyers when they went  out the same thing was also going to be true the   picture of the dallas morning news ad that says  welcome mr kennedy the same man who put together   the wanted for treason flyers also helped pay for  the ad the full-page ad in the dallas morning news   challenging kennedy for his foreign policy  that seemed frankly too communistic to be real   but again there's those ties with him and  walker but of course we all know what happened   on november 22nd of 1963 with the assassination  of john f kennedy with people pointing fingers   at the new right and particularly the far right  and blaming them for what actually was happening   now it didn't take too long of course  we found out over time that you had lee   harvey oswald the gentleman on the right who was  involved in the shooting among others and then   the question is what do you do with that the  warren commission was going to be rooting out   all the different pieces of information it turned  out even before it got to the warren commission   there was a german newspaper at the end of  november who actually argued that not only was lee   harvey oswald guilty of killing kennedy but he was  the person who had actually shot at edwin walker and in fact they were the ones who put this out  before anybody else did not even an american   newspaper got to this first and so as a result  marina oswald who is in the picture on the left   was eventually questioned by investigators and  through the information that they got from marina   oswald the warren commission determined that  yeah in march of 1963 oswald had practiced some   surveillance on edwin walker on his house you  know checking his goings out and his comings in   and then in april yeah he had shot at him and  in fact the same type of bullet they determined   eventually to be the carcano bullet is the same  kind that was used in the kennedy assassination   but marina when she explained this to the warren  commission she said a lot of this was because   and as he put it in a letter to her it was due to  his hate for the fascist organizations and their   beliefs that's why he was targeting walker he was  so far right oswald didn't want him there at all   marina said that oswald had told her that  it was best for everybody that he got rid of   walker as he put it you know what would you say  if somebody got rid of hitler at the right time   and that he saw it as kind of the same thing now  the evidence for this she provided to the warren   commission was a letter that he had written to her  now most of his material that he had written out   a lot of it he had destroyed himself it all been  burned in his bathtub she kept this letter in fact   she hid it in a cookbook she was doing that as  kind of leveraged to protect herself and protect   their child from oswald she said she was trying  to keep him from beating her again basically but   that was why he had shot at him that's why he had  attended the us day he was so astounded by walker   he just didn't know what to do with them and  it's it's admittedly a controversial conclusion   but walker himself was more than happy to  kind of pick up with this idea and run with it   he called the assassination attempt the  april crime and he said it was probably   not just oswald he said it was oswald and  somebody else he assumed it was jack ruby   who of course was the person who approached  oswald when he was being moved after he was   arrested and shot in point blank walker thought  the two had actually ended up working together   and in fact walker would go even further than  that eventually he argued that attorney general   bobby kennedy had known about oswald and had  they had had him in custody he released him   and all of this was the result that if  that had not been the case kennedy would   probably have been safe but as it was he  said kennedy as he put it knew his assassin   so walker was putting all of this together in his  mind but after the jfk assassination one of the   things about the far right in dallas is it does  tend to temper down a little bit because of the   focus that a lot of people had before oswald was  arrested there were still elements that remained   walker was no exception he would continue to speak  although his audiences were not necessarily as big   as they would have been before but he continued  into the 1970s in kind of weird ways first of   all one thing towards the end of his life he  did try to fight to get his pension back he   eventually did get that back in 1982 when ronald  reagan was president he got it with back pay   but he had a couple of run-ins with the law on  his own these were not necessarily affiliated with   integration efforts or anything he was arrested  twice in dallas parks for public lewdness and   i'll just leave it at that but otherwise he  continued to try to put forth his own ideas   on what was happening with oswald and the  kennedys and how all of this basically intertwined   he said if there hadn't been a conspiracy against  law and against justice and against himself   kennedy he said would still be alive and he said  if only walker could have known what oswald was   capable of doing if somebody had just told him he  said all of us could have been avoided he said the   fbi was aware of it the dallas police department  was aware of it but protected him anyway   but he put these ideas forth along  with a lot of other interesting things   that tended to be a little bit more on the fringe   but largely disregarded but eventually lived out  the rest of his life and died in 1993 of colon   cancer now what's interesting is a lot of people  tend to forget who he was even at the time though   there was at least one person john leedham who was  the republican county chair in dallas county in   the early 60s argued about walker said you know he  wasn't as prominent as you're making him out to be and admittedly he's not a figure  on a grand scale he's certainly not   say kennedy or johnson or even lee harvey oswald  but he was intertwined with a lot of the major   events of the early 1960s and as a result  he's certainly an interesting player in it   and the the way everything fits together it just  makes for an interesting story but hopefully that   sheds a different light on some of what was going  on giving his own perspective thank you very much   tom our first question is what inspired you to   prepare all the prodigious research that  you obviously done for this presentation well i've always been kind of interested in the  cold war and i was actually doing some research up   at smu at degalia and other places looking at how  the cold war played out in dallas in particular   and i got more and more involved in what was  happening with the far right in dallas i thought   about maybe doing some work i wrote an article  that was about smu for example during the cold   war and how they navigated that in the area of  academic freedom but i was looking at a little   bit of everything and walker's name popped up here  and there and he's just such an interesting guy   i just kept having to look um he you can't really  look away from somebody like edwin walker i don't   think and he had a lot of interesting things  to say and was more than happy to share all of   that in publicated in published format um but  it just kind of got caught up in it i think   another question we have is what were some of  the challenges you had while doing your research   well one of the big challenges is that i still  have yet to go to the center for american history   at ut austin where his papers actually are kept  now a lot of those papers have been digitized   and have been put online but not everything and i  would have to be able to get down there and spend   a good deal of time and just the time period that  i was trying to do this research that was simply   not feasible so that's one thing i would like  to do long term is be able to get down there and   rifle through some of his papers that was probably  the biggest challenge was there any particular   point or insight that you had but because not  many people have studied walker on a comprehensive   level like you have was a particular insight  that kind of uh you felt like was new to your   you added to the body of knowledge about general  walker that i added to the body of knowledge given what i've seen i think i brought it to a wider audience but  beyond that i'm not really sure well i think   what's marvelous is how you put it compiled  it into one uh meaningful presentation   thank you okay we're here we have some more  questions wonderful from our virtual audience any idea why walker was so against his picture  being taken by the press we saw from the   presentation that there are certainly pictures of  him that exist so why was he only against certain   pictures being taken by the press and i might  add to that question most politicians want their   pictures taken yeah that makes him it makes him  kind of unusual and i'm not exactly sure it was   just it was one of these strange situations  where he just told him that he'd had enough   and i think they may have been getting a little  bit too close and may have seemed a little bit too   intrusive my guess and it's hard to tell because  a lot of this is coming out of newspaper articles   that don't really speculate but my guess on a lot  of this is it felt like it was teaming up with   reporters who might be asking questions that were  a little bit more accusatory for lack of a better   term or confrontive i'm sorry confronted yeah  confrontational but that may be part of it um   i'm not exactly sure it could have been argued and  i think some people probably would have done this   that sometimes he did behave in a way that  was slightly off-kilter that was not unusual   the fact that he grabbed the one newspaper that  when a tv cameraman and threw him into a pile   of plates just to get him out of his face  that's not something people normally do no   and he wasn't even he wasn't even the main  part of the whole the whole luncheon it was   george wallace but he just didn't want that camera  there so is there any particular moment from the   kennedy family that the kennedy family noticed  and took an antagonistic stance towards walker   i can't imagine that bobby kennedy would have  let had walker take a psychiatric evaluation was   without some prior escalation he was a little  bit concerned over how walker behaved walker   had a bit of a reputation in fact there are a  couple of movies that came out in the early 60s   that a lot of people say are based on walker one  was seven days in may one that's much better known   is the stanley kubrick film doctor strangelove or  how i learned to stop worrying and love the bomb   the general that kind of dives off the deep end  is said to be loosely based on walker perhaps   there's no way to really tie that together  for sure but that's certainly been what a   lot of people have suggested and apparently bobby  kennedy did say at one point that the reason field   commanders had no power of decision over tactical  nuclear weapons was because of people like edwin   walker and he said as much so he saw how walker  had behaved and how he appeared to be at least to   kennedy's eyes somewhat unbalanced and  i think again like you they said there's   no love lost on either side well to  follow up on the first question um   the politicians i've known relish the camera  in front of their face wherever they are   right whether their church or or a mass meeting  of some sort they love having their picture taken   so obviously he didn't have any uh i won't  say obviously he didn't appear to have   a oppressed person advising him  on how to deal with the press   it doesn't look like it doesn't i don't i don't  know but uh it's certainly you presented a   marvelous presentation and thank you dr adrian  caulfield for this delightful talk and come back   when she's back uh in the spring and  see you on december the 1st thank you you

Channel: City of Allen - ACTV

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Length: 44min 13sec (2653 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 20 2020