THE SECRET LIFE OF JOHN PEEL
The passing of John Peel last year saw many mourn the loss of, without a shadow of a doubt, the greatest DJ of all time. Whilst a few also rans like Jo Whiley may try and stake claims on his vacant crown, they will never fill his shoes, no matter how high their cowboy boots are.
As the nation paused to reflect upon the end of a remarkable career in which Peel, [often singled handed] championed the offbeat, the leftfield and the underground artists that populated the popular music canvas, kick starting the careers of so many household names, musical legends and rock icons that I am not even going to attempt to list them.
Nonetheless most people are unaware of Peel’s less well documented career as an intelligence agent or his murky role in one of the defining events of the 20th Century.
Only now, after his death and with un-precedented access to files gained through the freedom of information act both in Britain and the USA coupled with never before heard eye-witness testimony, we can reveal Peel’s pivotal role in the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
Peel made no secret of his early DJ-ing job in Dallas Texas, nor for that matter did he hide the fact he was in the Dallas Police station during Lee Harvey Oswald’s interrogation and subsequent slaying at the hands of Jack Ruby. Like every good cover story, an element of truth lends to believability. Who would disbelieve the down to earth Peel’s admission that he was so intrigued by history unfolding on his doorstep, that he blagged his way in pretending to be a reporter from the Liverpool Echo? Why not, the world media had descended on Dallas. What difference was one reporter from a Northern English provincial newspaper going to make? Quite a lot, as we shall see.
Born John Robert Parker Ravenscroft, in 1939 to middle class parents near Merseyside. He attended a minor public school, attracting the attentions of his housemaster who labelled him ‘eccentric’, mostly due to his fledgling love for Rock ‘n’ Roll. However it was during National Service [1957-59] that his secret life began. Cold War paranoia about reds under ever bed had not quite died away and Private Ravenscroft was quickly attached to an intelligence company. Initially army friends recall he volunteered because it seemed like ‘a bit of a lark and a chance to doss around listening to foreign radio stations.’ Very quickly his superiors latched on to his talent as a disc jockey and encouraged him to develop the laid back laconic style that was to latterly become his trademark
With his public school ties and friends in the old boy network, Lieutenant Ravenscroft walked out of the army and into MI6. The western powers still didn’t know what to make of the hip swinging side-burned phenomenon that was Elvis Presley and his ilk, but they were scared enough to want one of their men on the inside. The fact that the youth of all races seemed to be united in loving its anti-establishment ethos sent shivers along the corridors of power both in Whitehall and the White House.
In a joint operation with the CIA, Peel, still using his birth name, was dispatched to Dallas, Texas and the WWR station to monitor pop activities for communist influence and subversion, whilst subtly broadcasting pro-Western ideals in his own inevitable way. He began to become disillusioned with his role following his discovery of the CIA’s assassination of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper during a drunken evening with his CIA liaison officer E. Howard Hunt [later a principal figure in the Watergate scandal with destroyed the Nixon administration.]
Despite this he persevered. He had become a minor celebrity and often dropped into Jack Ruby’s Carousel Club for a Guinness or two after his show. It was here he was first mistaken for Lee Harvey Oswald. This was no unlucky accident. Peel knew Oswald, himself an officer in the US Office of Naval Intelligence, who had already defected to and returned from the USSR and currently busy infiltrating pro and anti-Castro groups in the American South. One former US spook, who wishes to remain nameless, told us in was not uncommon for spies to swap aliases, especially if one was elsewhere on a deep cover operation.
Quite how Peel’s unmistakable English accent could pass for Oswald’s southern drawl remains an enigma. What cannot be denied were the striking similarities between the two. Many former Ruby showgirls cannot tell the two apart to this day. Our source also suggested it was Peel and not Oswald who posed in the infamous back yard rifle photos, so crucial in convincing the world of Lee’s guilt.
The ruse was twofold; Peel could convincing deflect unwanted radio fans and groupies by producing his Oswald I.D and Oswald could go about his secret business untroubled. This explains the numerous sightings of alternative Oswald’s who popped up around the South during the months running up to the events of November 22nd 1963. What remains a mystery are how many times Peel masqueraded as Oswald. Did Peel pay the suspicious trip to Mexico City Soviet Embassy? Our source refused to be drawn on it.
Peel began to smell a rat after he was asked to go to a shooting range and shoot at other peoples targets, telling them he thought he was shooting at ‘that son of a bitch Kennedy!’ Initially viewing it as a bit of fun poking at the expense of the ignorant Texan rednecks, he saw the noose tightening around the neck of his friend from New Orleans when Hunt hinted to him he might need a new alias as Oswald would not be around for much longer. The penny dropped with the astute Peel when fellow agent Richard Case Nagell, afraid he would take the rap, fired three shots in to the ceiling of a southern bank with a high powered rifle, then calmly waited to be arrested. He used his one phone call to tip off the whole story to Peel.
After his telex to every FBI office in the land warning of the plot was ‘ignored’, Peel had to think fast. Unable to contact Oswald before or on the morning of the Presidential visit, John hatched a make or break plan. He would try and spoil the apparent coup d’tat by taking a shot at the President himself from an exposed position. Finding himself a spot behind a picket fence at the far end of Dealey Plaza at the top of a grassy knoll he waited. Sadly for Peel and the world, he didn’t have the full details of the plot and his shot, [which missed] was lost in the hail of gunfire from the book Texas Schoolbook Depository. Confiding in the late Kenny Everett, a one-time Radio 1 colleague, he hoped his shot would pre-empt the actual assassination attempt and the motorcade would speed away and he could betray the actual assassins upon his arrest or later when he was in custody.
Frightened by the hostile mob heading up the knoll toward him, not to mention the armed police out-riders the DJ made a sharp exit. In his haste he dropped a rare Link Wray acetate, over looked by the Warren Commission and now unplayable due to shabby storage over the years, but the distinctive biro star system Peel used to rate records he received can still be clearly seen on the sleeve. With the world caving in around his friend Peel made for the Dallas Police station to attempt to ensure the true came out. Masquerading as we know as a British reporter, he failed to get his story across. Keen eyed observes can spot an exasperated Peel in the later press conference watching impotently as the Police parade a the now famous Mannlicher Carcano rifle, he himself had bought for Oswald some months earlier.
Frustrated, Peel dropped in on Ruby’s on the way home. hoping to meet with some contacts in a vain attempt to right the monumental wrong. Instead he found a drunken and upset Ruby. Try as he may, he could not dissuade Ruby from his conviction of Oswald’s guilt. Others had been before him and poisoned the volatile Jack’s mind with all manner of tales incriminating Lee Harvey. Suspecting Ruby would be so drunk he'd forget the whole thing by morning, John went home to try and think of another way out for everyone.
But events travelled fast and the following day, whilst taking his usual place in the press scrum he saw Jack Ruby lunge through the crowd and fire his deadly volley. Sandwiched between several meaty mid-western hacks, Peel couldn’t get close enough to prevent the bloodshed.
Soon after Peel moved to LA and a new assignment investigating the growing counter-culture. He began to become increasingly paranoid of his intelligence colleagues. Though no-one was aware of the true identity of the grass knoll gunman, they had their suspicions. Equally the public began to ask questions of the official version of events, particularly the growing legions of sceptical conspiracy theorists. By the late ‘60’s, Peel had grown so disillusioned by his intelligence work he moved back to Britain. MI6 put him to work on the growing number of Pirate Radio stations at anchor in the international waters around Britain. It was here he met Terry Wogan, a former Irish terrorist, who had renounced violence in favour of light hearted banter.
Realising that a leopard could indeed change his spots, he resigned from the spying business and devoted himself to his first love: - rock ‘n’ roll. With the advent of Radio 1, and his new name John Peel, adopted upon his break with the intelligence services, the legend we all know was born.
His late night spot was deliberate. Wary of not only the CIA, but the ever growing conspiracy theory cottage industry, his late night spot kept him largely out of the limelight. He refused the breakfast show and many other higher profile slots, for the same reasons. He didn’t want his face to be known, especially with the ever growing volumes of photographic analysis of the ‘grassy knoll’ gunman. He feared one day techniques would become so advanced that his face could be plucked from the image. So far this has not been the case. Also Peel alone knew his shot had missed and it seems he was delighted when the computer simulation by boffin Dale Myers in 2003 seemed to put paid to the grassy knoll head shot theory for at least a few years. Nevertheless he remained haunted by those earth shattering events. He never knew for sure if Oswald had been the gunman or if anyone had fired that day. His credentials within the intelligence community sank from Nov 22nd onward, and he was out of the loop for anything other than his own operations.
It irked him at first that the ‘awful’ bands he championed in order to keep his low profile below ground, almost always became the most critically acclaimed bands of their generation. However by the 1980’s he had changed so much from those early days in Dallas, that his fear ebbed away and he reluctantly began to embrace his fame.
Continually battling his demons, his award winning Home Truths radio show, was originally meant as an opportunity for Peel to come clean about his previous double life and his guilt over failing to save President Kennedy, the hapless Oswald or the luckless Jack Ruby. However at the last minute, programmers backed out and the show was aired in it’s now famous format. Rumours persist that the first confessional show is locked away in the BBC vaults.
More astute conspiracy theorists have suggested that Peel’s sudden death bear the hallmarks of CIA skulduggery, but these remain as such – theories. Whatever the truth, John Peel was his own man to the end.
*Extract taken from John Peel – The Hitman and Hero – From The Bay Of Pigs To Dogs Die In Hot Cars by Simon Bates & Bruno Brookes, £19.99, Franklin Mint International Press
Comments
]]>
