First, if you read this item, do not forward it to any movie directors,
liberal types, or The Nation.     Unless you want to see this matter
opened again for re-discussion?

The funny thing about this article (beside the remark about Dallas's
undeserved reputation as being a center of Right-Wing lunacy), is that I
could never get The Dallas Times Herald to publish my letters, either.
And I sent them a bundle when I was 15-16 years old.      But they did
publish Molly Ivins!

So, my question is.... if the Herald had published me and Oswald, and
not published Molly, exactly how would that have effected history?
Can metaphysics help us understand what happened that fateful day?

Tony Abdo
_____________________________
From The Dallas Morning News-
A.C. Greene: Would letter from Oswald have changed our history?
09/17/2000
By A.C. Greene

Sometime in the late summer of 1963, when I was editorial page editor of
the late Dallas Times Herald, I received a letter demanding fair play
for Cuba. At this time in Dallas, both newspapers received an enormous
amount of mail from readers, quite a bit of it shrieking propaganda
proclaiming "They're only 90 miles away!" or one particular letter the
editorial page staff treasured, "There are 30,000 uniformed Chinese
troops already in Baja, California."

Dallas had acquired an undeserved reputation as a center of right-wing
extremism from small but loud groups that represented a tiny percentage
of the population. Much of the shouting came from other regions: For
instance, a woman in Amarillo wrote me every day with a "disaster"
package from the "Paul Revere American Yeomen" (PRAY). (We had to make a
list of "constant writers" that we would carry only every four or more
weeks.)

Although we were running as many letters as our space could handle, we
tried to offer as many valid, differing viewpoints as could be managed.
Thus, when the fair-play-for-Cuba letter came in, we immediately checked
its authenticity. I got assistant editor John Weeks to listen in while I
called. I identified myself and asked if I was speaking to Mr. O.H. Lee.

"Yes," the voice admitted, rather slowly.

"Did you write me a letter recently?" I asked.

"You're not going to run it, are you?" the voice asked accusingly.

I explained that we never guaranteed that a letter would be run, but we
had to know for sure that the letter had been written by the person who
signed it. Then I asked what his letter was about, and again I got the
plaintive response, "You're not going to run it, are you?"

After I assured him that the contents of the letter would not stop us
using it, he appeared satisfied. He made a flattering remark about our
page, and Johnny and I thought nothing more of the letter. We frequently
made such calls assuring identity.

Early on the afternoon of Nov. 22, 1963, the late Robert Ford came
running from The Associated Press office, on our floor, holding a file
that identified Lee Harvey Oswald. I saw that O.H. Lee had been a
pseudonym; our fair-play-for-Cuba letter had been from Lee Harvey
Oswald, and he was the man we had talked to.

On that fateful Friday, Johnny Weeks went through letters that we had
sent back to our composing room to be set in type. Normally, after being
set in type, the letters would have been stuck on a big metal hook where
they remained until the spike was "cleaned." The letter from "O.H. Lee"
had long since been trashed when Johnny Weeks checked the spike that
day.

Recently, Greg Jaynes, a Dallas historian, read Times Herald editorial
pages for three months prior to Nov. 22, 1963, and could not find the
letter. Would it have changed history had it run?

A.C. Greene is an author and Texas historian who lives in Salado.