Richard Case Nagell Revisited
The Nagell story, first written up in detail by Dick Russell in The Man Who Knew Too Much, continues to come up in Kennedy assassination discussions. I followed along behind Dick, obtaining a extensive document collection on Nagell and writing about him in my own book Someone Would Have Talked. Along the way I had done a extended study and analysis of what I term his “situational behavior” in an attempt to determine what was driving his communication and remarks about Lee Oswald and a conspiracy over the course of Nagell’s life.
There is little doubt Nagell’s story is complex, driven by his personal problems including his facial injury, his separation and later divorce from his Japanese wife, as well as his arrest for attempted back robbery (he fired a pistol inside a bank but neither requested nor took money). His court trial (in which his lawyer filed an a psychological defense – much objected to by Nagell) was tightly focused and failed to address Nagell’s actual motivation. His lawyer later said if he had only had proof of some of Nagell’s claims, especially in regard to his recent activities in Mexico City, he would have pursued a much different defense — it was decades later that definitive proof of Nagell’s time there (and his apparent attempt to defect at the US. Embassy there) would emerge.
After his release from prison his legal battles to recover his children (eventually successful) as well as to obtain a disability pension have to figure into his situational behavior – as well as what certainly has all the appearance of a CIA supported venture by Nagell across Europe including East Germany.
At the end of it all does Nagell’s story tell us something about Lee Oswald, and specifically about Oswald in 1963, more specifically about Oswald that summer in New Orleans. My judgement is that it does. Does it tells us something specific about the Dallas conspiracy and the attack in Dallas – I think not. Which is why Nagell is discussed at length in Someone Would Have Talked but not in my most recent work, Tipping Point, which focuses specifically on the Dallas plot and attack.
As to my reason for that distinction, I would refer readers to a very recent interview with Bob Wilson where he and I explore all this in detail, its probably the best dialog I have done on the Nagell conundrum and you can listen to it here:
