Dick Russell Claims Richard Case Nagell was Murdered by the CIA
David Hoffman and Dick Russell appeared on the conspiracy podcast Ciphered Past to promote their new book, Who Killed JFK?
Here is a transcript: (I've highlighted some of this in bold italics)
Tim Gardner: One of the things about the book that really stands out to me—and Dick, you did what I mean, a masterpiece in The Man Who Knew Too Much—you start out the book talking about Nagell. To our audience who didn't know about Richard Case Nagell and how this starts to build the chronological parts of the book, it's a really important piece to the story. What can you tell our audience about that?
Dick Russell: Well, first of all, that two months and two days before the assassination, Richard Nagell walked into a bank in El Paso, Texas, and shot two holes in the wall or the ceiling—I can't remember exactly which—and walked outside and intentionally got himself placed in federal custody. And he wanted to be out of the way when the assassination happened.
He was involved in a conspiracy to eliminate the President. He was working with Lee Harvey Oswald in a capacity that we're not quite sure to this day and may never be exactly what it was. But the fact that—we can get into Oswald's CIA connections later—Nagell also was sending a message to whoever was behind the assassination that he might be talking, you know, he was getting himself placed in custody, and they better be careful. They better scuttle what they were doing or else face the fact that they were going to get arrested. He'd warned the FBI; he'd sent a warning letter to J. Edgar Hoover about this.
Well, it's a long story, but Nagell ended up being twice tried and twice convicted for quote "attempted bank robbery," which even the arresting officer, Jim Bundren—who was a young cop at the time—told me that at the arraignment, which was several weeks before the assassination, Nagell looked at him... and first of all, the policeman looked at Nagell and said, "You didn't really try to rob that bank, did you?" And Nagell said, "You're a pretty smart cop, aren't you? Well, I'll just tell you this: I wouldn't want to be in Dallas right now."
Now this is the arresting officer saying this. So it was one of the major important pieces of—I call—evidence that Nagell was who he said he was, and probably the key figure that was still alive up until 1995 in this terrible saga.
Eli Frame: Yeah, you know, a real quick aside on that book: that's the book that got me into this whole thing. It's a fantastic, fantastic book, and I wish I should have brought it out here for you to see all the dog ears and marks in it. It's a wonderful book, and I think everybody who studies this has read it, and I think they all agree.
So, you know, Dick, I think you were the one who was with Nagell's son Robert, or you were the one who told him that his father had died, right? And that the purple lockbox in Tucson—the mysterious lockbox that had who knows what in it—and Robert arrived, and it was gone. 30 years later, what do you think happened to that lockbox? Who do you think took it? What do you think might have been in it?
Dick Russell: Well, it's a big question. I mean, first of all, the timing of what happened to Nagell: he had just received—I'd given a talk in Washington, D.C., and the Assassination Records Review Board people were there and heard me speak, and they decided—I had no idea this had happened—but they decided right afterwards that they were going to subpoena Nagell and interview him, and also ask for his records. And the very day that subpoena arrived in his mailbox in Los Angeles, he was found dead in his apartment. Now a lot of people have died under strange circumstances in this particular saga, but anyway...
So I was alerted to this by a newsman that I knew, Pete Noyes, who just happened to come across it on the obituary police blotters for that day. And so I knew that he and his son were estranged. I called his son and told him what had happened. Robert then came to Los Angeles right away and went to the house or the apartment where Nagell had been living. The Review Board was there too—they sent people out right away. They even had in L.A. a news report that there was a bomb squad; they were worried that there was a bomb going to go off inside that building.
And they found this set of keys to a series of lockboxes that were listed with an address in Tucson, Arizona. So the son took off and went there. His own apartment that same weekend was broken into, I should say, and ransacked. And when he got there to where the lockboxes were, there were nine of them, I believe, and only one was missing—and that was the purple trunk that Nagell said contained what a lot of people wanted to know.
Who did it? Somebody was obviously watching what was going on. I think—although Nagell's death was ruled as a heart attack officially, I mean the CIA knew well how to give heart attacks to people with a heart attack gun back in those days—I think he was intentionally killed so that he would not speak to the Records Review Board. And simultaneously, somebody who knew that they didn't want the truth coming out got rid of that lockbox before the Review Board could get to it.
Where to even start? This is all complete nonsense.
Russell says that Nagell tried to warn J. Edgar Hoover and sent him a letter.
But did he?
Nagell writes:
"One purpose in communicating with you at this time is to advise that I am no longer certain the letter I dispatched to the Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, in September 1963 was sent via postal registry, or, for that matter, even mailed."
What an astounding admission, no? Do you think this will be in the new Reiner/Russell book?
Did Nagell actually tell Bundren that he wouldn't want to be in Dallas?
"Yeah, okay, Oswald's name came up. I can't tell you whether Oswald was mentioned before or after the assassination. I remember Nagell saying something to me about that, and also about General Walker that Oswald was supposed to have shot at. Nagell mentioned Cuba. He mentioned a lot of things. That's about all I can say."
Bundren isn't that confident as to whether Nagell brought up Oswald before or after the assassination. The story about Dallas was told by Bundren in 1990.
That's a rather important point. I wonder if that is mentioned in Who Killed JFK?
Was Nagell's death really mysterious?
Richard Case Nagell had a full forensic autopsy, which noted "the decedent is a 65-year-old man with a history of heart disease, ulcerative colitis and alcohol abuse." The autopsy noted "significant coronary artery disease," which was "consistent with the scene suggesting sudden unexpected death."
Nagell was also a heavy smoker, as you can see from this excerpt from a 1969 article in The Family:
When Nagell was hospitalized in 1962 in Bay Pines, Florida, the hospital's final summary noted that "he smoked continuously during the interview."
Here is an excerpt from the police report about Nagell being found dead in his apartment:
Did the CIA use a heart attack gun?
A prototype of such a weapon was made but was never actually used. It used a microscopic dart frozen until the exact moment of firing which presented major logistical challenges for field agents.
But why would the CIA use such a weapon on Nagell?
Did he really possess any secret information? In fact, Nagell had years to disclose any information he had. He never stopped teasing researchers with supposed tapes, documents and photographs. Nothing ever materialized.
As for the supposed purple trunk, here is an excerpt from an ARRB report:
Samoluk: You may know the name of Richard Case Nagell, a military intelligence officer. His name had been swirling around for many years. And you may know the author Dick Russell, who wrote the 700-page book on Richard Case Nagell, The Man Who Knew Too Much. And so we had been pondering that, although to be perfectly candid, I did not think that there was anything really there, relative to Richard Case Nagell, I thought that he was a troubled individual that may have said he was in possession of records and had knowledge of things that I didn't find credible, but we thought we had to pursue it.
The ARRB did not subpoena Nagell, they just sent a letter asking him if he would talk to the ARRB.
Samoluk was one of the people who flew out to LA to search his apartment:
Samoluk: If I recall correctly. If I don't get this completely accurate, forgive me, because it's been a while since I've been day-to-day in in the record, so to speak. But Nagell had always talked about a trunk, full of records and relevant materials that he had. Well, we didn't find that trunk at his apartment, which by the way, wasn't in the best neighborhood in L. A. He was down on his luck, not doing well. And it was a real bad neighborhood near Dodger Stadium. So, that was a personal note that I wanted to add for me that the job was sometimes a little bit, a little bit scary what we were doing.
But months later, I would guess it was, I got a call from the niece. They had found, somehow they found out that he had used a storage facility and he had some trunks there, that is Richard Case Nagell had some trunks. And they had them. So, I flew back out to California, and met them. And together, we went through the trunks. I don't recall that there was anything particularly relevant and whatever color the trunk that he had talked about, we never found a trunk of that color. So whether or not that adds to the mystery, what happened to that trunk? I don't think there was much to his story.
Will any of the above material be in the Reiner/Russell book?
We will know next week when the book is launched.
Stay tuned.
Update
I also was in email contact with Nagell's son Bob when I was writing my book, A Heritage of Nonsense, Here is what he wrote me when I asked his father's supposed KGB/CIA connections:
Bob Nagell: I know very little about that aspect of my father’s life as he was very tight-lipped. My dad spoke several languages, among them excellent Russian and Japanese. He used to receive letters and packages frequently from Russia including Lenin’s complete works in Russian, and he had travelled there a few times that I knew of, so he did have friends in Moscow when it was unpopular, but I don’t know directly about any CIA/KGB connections; Anything like that was never evident in the time that I lived with him. I have my doubts as we always struggled financially, and dad never had anything that would cause me to believe he was profiting from any clandestine activities. He intensely disliked the US Government more and more as his lawsuit for 100% disability rating progressed and always commented that “the masses are asses”. He held disdain for many people, including Dick Russell and his book, which I never read in its entirety, terming it garbage. However, as an adult looking back on everything I see two parallel threads, one involving what I view as a coincidental timing of political events interwoven with the domestic turmoil in his marriage to my mother, which had resulting in his departure from the only career he had, the army, and his subsequent inability to secure suitable work because of his appearance and his later arrest for domestic violence vis-a-vis my mom, due to which he lost his job at the ABC in Los Angeles which caused him to become destitute. It was after this that he went into the bank in El Paso. His confinement at Springfield weighed heavily on him. He felt he was punished by being confined despite recommendations that he be released. I never saw anything to suggest that he was actually mentally ill. He was very smart but had personal demons that followed him from childhood when he and his sister were put in an orphanage by his mother who kept the other children in the family. He always said the truth would come out after he died, but there was no revelation. Despite the governments taking of some of his belongings, this one fact alone causes me to have my doubts about the whole JFK involvement because he wouldn’t have been so careless as to have left things to end with his passing, that was how much he despised his adversaries.
Litwin, Fred. A Heritage of Nonsense: Jim Garrison's Tales of Mystery and Imagination (pp. 228-229). Kindle Edition.
Previous Relevant Blog Posts on the Reiner/Russell podcast/book, Who Killed JFK?
The introduction is cause for concern.
A few thoughts about this book.
There is no evidence tying Willoughby to the assassination.
How on earth could Rob Reiner and his partners believe this ridiculous story?
We take apart the second five episodes of Reiner's podcast on the JFK assassination.
We take apart the first five episodes of Reiner's podcast on the JFK assassination.
Was there a fake defector program at Nags Head, North Carolina?
Flimsy evidence is cited that originated in Hustler Magazine.
Reiner believes the two-Oswald theory.
This blog post also covers the concluding episode of Reiner's podcast.
Conspiracy theorists have no regard for truth.
Additional Posts on Richard Case Nagell
An AI video I made about the Nagell case.
Here is the complete Stasi file on Nagell along with a translation.
A good overview of the Nagell story.
John Barbour, an unabashed fan of Jim Garrison, goes on a rant about Richard Case Nagell. Why does he believe Nagell's story?
Nagell claimed that the East Germans sent him to Moscow for questioning. There is no evidence in the Stasi files that the did that.
The Importance of Richard Case Nagell to Some Conspiracy Theorists
Jim Garrison and a few conspiracy theorists think Nagell is a very important witness. But is he really?
Genesis of the Richard Case Nagell story
David Kroman met Richard Case Nagell at the Springfield Medical Center for Federal Prisoners. Stephen Jaffe, a Garrison volunteer, wrote a memo, relating Nagell's story through the eyes and ears of David Kroman.
Nagell was convicted of armed robbery and was sentenced to ten years, but his conviction was overturned because of startling new evidence.
Richard Case Nagell and the JFK Assassination
There is no credible evidence that Nagell had any foreknowledge of either Lee Harvey Oswald or the JFK assassination.
Nagell claims he met Oswald in Japan, Texas, Mexico City, and New Orleans. There is no credible evidence that he ever met Oswald.
Nagell went to Cuba and met with Fidel Castro and even played ping-pong with the man.
Insane Conspiracy Theories about Richard Case Nagell
Richard Case Nagell said that he knew the two Oswalds - Lee Harvey and Leon. Some conspiracy theorists believe this madness.
Combine one part crazy and one part ridiculous and what do you come up with? An early attempt at a unified conspiracy theory of the JFK assassination.
Was there a plot in Los Angeles against JFK?
Two Smoking Guns of the Richard Case Nagell Story
Nagell sent conspiracy theorist Dick Russell one page of a military intelligence file which seemed to indicate that he was monitoring Oswald and his wife on behalf of the CIA. But does the whole document really show that?
Did Richard Case Nagell have an Oswald Military ID in his possession when he was arrested in September 1963?
Richard Case Nagell and Jim Garrison
Richard Case Nagell believes that he wasn't called to testify at Clay Shaw's trial because his testimony would have blown up Jim Garrison's case.
At a conference in September 1968, Garrison and his investigators discuss his face-to-face meeting with Nagell in New York City.
William Martin, an Assistant District Attorney working for Jim Garrison, tried to retrieve a tape that Nagell said contained the voices of three JFK assassination conspirators.
Richard Popkin, author of "The Second Oswald," writes Jim Garrison about Richard Case Nagell. Garrison staffer Tom Bethell thought the Nagell lead was useless.
Richard Case Nagell's Mental Health
He had severe headaches.
In 1973, Richard Case Nagell was trying to get a full disability pension from the government, and he had Dr. Edwin Weinstein, who had examined him in 1955, write a letter on his behalf.
Nagell wrote to JFK in 1963 looking for help.
A lawsuit by Nagell proves his mental issues.
Nagell won a full disability pension in 1982 and the 60+ page court case provides complete details on his mental problems.
Richard Case Nagell told a psychiatrist why he shot up the bank in El Paso in 1963.
The FBI spoke to Nagell's ex-wife, his mother, his sister, and one of his friends. They all agreed that Nagell had significant mental health problems.
Nagell visited the American consulates in Zurich and Barcelona in 1969. He was a deeply disturbed man.
More shenanigans in Europe in 1970.
His mental issues were apparent during this visit.
Richard Case Nagell's Evidence
None of the so-called evidence that Nagell promised would materialize on his death has shown up. Did this evidence ever exist?
Samoluk was Deputy Director of the ARRB and he doesn't think much of the Nagell story.
