Bolton Ford Incident

The Bolton Ford Incident

On January 20, 1961, while Harvey Oswald was in Minsk, two men visited the Bolton Ford dealership in New Orleans. They spoke with Assistant Manager Oscar Deslatte and said they were interested in purchasing 10 Ford Econoline Trucks. As one of the men discussed the purchase with Deslatte the other man, who identified himself as Joseph Moore, made a list of the equipment they desired on the trucks.

Deslatte went to his boss, truck manager Fred Sewell, and told him about the two men who wanted to purchase trucks and said they represented the "Free Democrats of Cuba or some such organization." Sewell told Deslatte to give the men a bid of $75 over their cost for the trucks. Deslatte and Sewell returned to Deslatte's desk and wrote out a bid form to Joseph Moore. As Deslatte was filling out the bid form, Joseph Moore and the other man began talking to both Deslatte and Sewell.42

When Moore saw that Deslatte had written his name on the bid form he asked that the name be changed to "Friends of Democratic Cuba." Moore's friend looked· at the form and said, "By the way, you'd better put my name down there because I'm the man handling the money." When Deslatte asked, "What's your name?" the man replied, "Lee Oswald."61-04

Sewell described Lee Oswald as, "5-foot-6 or 5-foot-7, thin, about 140 pounds, and thought he needed a meal and a haircut. He recalled that Oswald was clean but "wasn't well dressed and he wasn't shabby." Sewell described the second man, who identified himself as Joseph Moore as, "Kind of heavy-set ..... not overly, but well built ..... he was curly haired ..... he had a scar over his left eye ..... olive complexioned and seemed to be educated ..... he had a Cuban accent and looked like a Cuban."

Deslatte gave the original bid form to "Lee Oswald" and kept a copy for his files, which he gave to the FBI following the assassination.61-05

The purchaser was listed as the "Friends of Democratic Cuba," 402 St. Charles Street, New Orleans, LA., phone number JA-5-0763.43 After talking with Deslate for over an hour the two men took the original bid form and left.

NOTE: The Friends of Democratic Cuba was incorporated on January 9, 1961 in
Louisiana. The address of 402 St. Charles Street was listed as vacant in the 1960, 1961
and 1962 New Orleans City directories.

Remarkable about the “Friends of Democratic Cuba” were the names of two of its officers. The image shown below is a composite scan from the beginning and the end of the Louisiana Articles of Incorporation for Friends of Democratic Cuba, Inc.

W. Guy Banister worked at the infamous 544 Camp Street address in New Orleans, made famous by the Jim Garrison investigation.

Gerard Tugague employed Oswald briefly in late 1955 and early 1956 at the 300 Sanlin Building in New Orleans.

On our website John Armstrong wrote, “This well-known incident was cited in Warren Commission Document 75 p. 677 and the House Select Committee on Assassinations Vol. X; FBI 67-39565-66. For years some JFK researchers believed that an impostor was using Oswald's name while the alleged future assassin was in Russia. As more and more examples surfaced it became clear that another man, using the name "Lee Harvey Oswald," was associating with anti-Castro Cubans and CIA operatives in the southern United States during the very years the Warren Commission placed him in the Soviet Union. This man was southern born LEE Oswald, and is a clear indication that both Oswalds were active in American intelligence operations.”There are other examples of LEE Oswald operating in the U.S. while HARVEY Oswald was in Russia. For an overview, see THIS PAGE on HarveyandLee.net.

Below is a copy of the FBI report covering this incident. Compare it to the Garrison interview excerpted above. For more information about why the FBI report is misleading, see below.

As we’ll see immediately below, by 12/19/63 the FBI had already confirmed through a third source that “Lee Harvey Oswald” said he “was trying to get trucks for Cuba” and that Oswald had contacted Bolton Ford assistant truck manager Oscar W. Deslatte, who worked directly below truck manager Fred Sewell. The FBI apparently tried to bury the Bolton Ford incident, but none of its members, including J. Edgar Hoover, could have predicted that Fred Sewell would be interviewed by James Alcock and Jim Garrison on May 2, 1967.

Sewell told Garrison and Alcock that he believed that one of the two men who visited the Bolton dealership in 1961 had used the name “Lee Oswald.” Sewell then described what happened immediately after the assassination of JFK: “So when the President was assassinated and the name came out, OSCAR come in either the next morning or the morning after and said, ‘Say, Fred, do you remember those two guys who was in here from Cuba trying to get some buses cheap?’ and I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘I think that one of those men was the one who killed the President.’ I said, ‘Aw your kidding’ and he said ‘We’ve got a piece of paper around here somewhere with a bid on it.’ He went and hauled that piece of paper out and the[n] OSCAR called the FBI.”

Sewell went on to describe how two young FBI agents came to the dealership and collected the bid that contained the name “Oswald” and “Friends of Democratic Cuba.” “They took two pieces of plastic and they scooped it up between it and they said have you touched this and we said, well, I guess so.” Sewell said repeatedly they they weren’t shown any pictures of Oswald by the FBI agents, but that the agents informed them that “OSWALD wasn’t even in the country at that time. He couldn’t be.”

Sewell went on to say that the Oswald he saw at the Bolton dealership “appears to be the same man” he saw on television after the President was shot.

By Dec. 19, 1963, the SAC in New Orleans was already confirming directly to J. Edgar Hoover himself that a man named Charles Pearson, who was office manager at Graham Paper Company, had stated that his friend Oscar W. Deslatte, assistant manager of truck sales at Bolton Ford, had been contacted by Oswald about buying trucks. Worse yet, the whole process of investigating the incident was prompted by a phone call from none other than Carlos Bringieur, the man who pretended to fight and then debate on the radio with “Lee Harvey Oswald” in August 1963 in New Orleans.

Above material quoted or adapted from Harvey and Lee by John Armstrong and includes document reproductions from the John Armstrong Collection at Baylor University.