Tabloid says it has proof: Ted Cruz’s father is mystery man in Lee Harvey Oswald photo
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article73449297.html
National Enquirer claims photo is proof that Rafael B. Cruz was standing alongside JFK assassin
Cruz campaign dismisses allegation as ‘garbage’
Cruz’s father had been pro-Castro but had turned on him when Cuban leader said he was a communist
Lee Harvey Oswald, front left, standing next to man never identified by the Warren Commission, center in white shirt, handing out leaflets for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee taken outside the International Trade Mart in New Orleans on Aug.16, 1963. The National Enquirer is now saying that they have determined through photo analysis that the man is Rafael B. Cruz, father of GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz. Johann Rush/WSDU-TV
By Maria Recio
[email protected]
WASHINGTON
The National Enquirer has published what it says is conclusive evidence that Ted Cruz’s father, Rafael B. Cruz, is the man photographed next to JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald distributing pro-Castro leaflets in 1963 in New Orleans.
The Cruz presidential campaign fired back unequivocally. “This is another garbage story in a tabloid full of garbage,” communications director Alice Stewart told McClatchy. “The story is false; that is not Rafael in the picture.”
The explosive suggestion that Cruz’s father would have had any affiliation with Oswald is not corroborated in any other way. Cuban-born Rafael Cruz is now a fervent anti-communist, but there was a time he supported then-rebel leader Fidel Castro. His son, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, frequently relates his father’s arrest and torture by government officials and subsequent escape to the United States.
The elder Cruz ended up at the University of Texas at Austin and still supported Castro, who led the revolution that overthrew the Batista regime in 1959. Castro formally declared himself Marxist in 1961.
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“The U.S. government was duped. The American people were duped. I was duped,” Rafael Cruz wrote in his book, “A Time for Action,” released in January. “When people ask me why I supported Castro in over-throwing the Cuban government, I readily admit that I didn’t realize he was a communist.”
There are photos of Rafael Cruz participating in a pro-Castro rally in 1959 and an article in the student newspaper where he describes his support for Castro. And one report questions the extent of the elder Cruz’s connections to Castro before fleeing Cuba.
The photos of Oswald distributing pro-Castro literature are from August 1963, just a few months before the JFK assassination in Dallas, which the Warren Commission Report on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy said was carried out by Oswald.
The tabloid hired photo experts who compared the elder Cruz’s photos from the late 1950s and early 1960s with the ones released by the Warren Commission. The man in the white shirt next to Oswald was never identified by the commission, and the Enquirer is now saying it was Cruz and blasted on its May 2 cover that “Ted Cruz Father Now Linked to JFK Assassination!”
The feature that is most interesting and similar is his insincere smile. Carole Lieberman, expert witness
The Enquirer has a testimonial from Mitch Goldstone, president and CEO of ScanMyPhotos, a California-based digitizing photo service, who told the tabloid, “There’s more similarity than dissimilarity. . . . it looks to be the same person and I can say as much with a high degree of confidence.”
And Carole Lieberman, a University of California - Los Angeles forensic psychiatrist and expert witness based in Beverly Hills, California, compared the photos and told the Enquirer “they seem to match.” Neither Goldstone nor Lieberman returned phone calls from McClatchy.
But Gus Russo, an author and journalist who has written extensively about the JFK assassination and Oswald, is dubious. Russo told McClatchy in an interview that Oswald, who was living in New Orleans in 1963, was not connected to the Cuban community there and would not have had a Cuban supporter helping him. “He was the ultimate loner,” said Russo. Another man seen in the video handing out leaflets had been hired by Oswald to do so at an unemployment office, according to the Warren Commission. Rafael Cruz also lived in New Orleans, but it was later in the 1960s.
As for the photo “evidence,” Russo said, “It’s very subjective. It’s not proof. It’s just an opinion. To charge something this big, you’d better have better proof than that ‘it looks like him.’”
The FBI would not comment about its photo recognition and aging identification techniques but referred McClatchy to a web page about its Investigative and Prosecutive Graphic Unit.
The Enquirer has focused on Ted Cruz during the presidential campaign with sensational stories about his alleged mistresses and supposed connection to the DC Madam. The tabloid, which has endorsed presidential frontrunner Donald Trump, said in a “declaration” published on a page of the story that the paper had been approached by someone it does not identify during the New York primary with the photos. “In this instance, we believe American voters have a right to know the truth about the Cruz family,” it says.
Maria Recio: 202-383-6103, @maria_e_recio
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