Thomas F. Harney

[L Verge]

I truly believe that the direction that modern Lincoln assassination researchers need to head in is trying to find some of these "minor" operatives who appear to have walked into the nether. The bottom rungs on every ladder lead to the top, if one keeps going.

Gen. Tidwell, as most of you know, was high up in covert actions during his career with both Army Intelligence and the CIA. He once told me that, when he learned that the French Resistance during WWII had based their underground activities on what they had been able to learn from the Confederate system, he began to really study that system - because few historians or intelligence operators had! James O. Hall had similar training during WWII in being given the Lincoln case to study from the judicial angle. He then entered the field of investigations at a high level with the Labor Department. Dave Gaddy, the third member of that triumvirate, was with one of our country's highest intelligence-gathering departments.

They developed leads to follow, and I think we owe it to them to keep on searching. IMO, Booth's small gang that takes a beating from historians, had help from both underlings and superiors. Connect enough dots, and I believe that a full picture will develop of a grander plan being developed over at least a year before the assassination that set the groundwork for what became Booth's "one mad act."