Six FBI Agents (Plus 1) and the HSCA

The year 1977 produced a bumper crop of candidates for listing under convenient deaths connected to the JFK assassination—including the deaths of six top FBI officials, all of whom were scheduled to testify before the House Select Committee on Assassinations.

Topping this list was former number-three man in the FBI William C. Sullivan, who had already had a preliminary meeting with investigators for the House committee. Sullivan was shot with a high-powered rifle near his New Hampshire home by a man who claimed to have mistaken him for a deer. The man was charged with killing a human being by accident” and released into the custody of his father, a state policeman. There was no further investigation of Sullivan’s death.

William Sullivan was shot dead near his home in Sugar Hill, New Hampshire, on 9th November 1977. An inquest decided that he had been shot accidentally by fellow hunter, Robert Daniels, who was fined $500 and lost his hunting license for 10 years.  Sullivan had been scheduled to testify before the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Sullivan, one of six top FBI officials who died in a six-month period in 1977. At the time of his death Sullivan was working on a book with journalist Bill Brown about his experiences with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Bureau: My Thirty Years in Hoover‘s FBI was published posthumously in 1979. The book was highly critical of both J. Edgar Hoover and Lyndon B. Johnson. William Sullivan was one of the former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover’s top aides, originally, then had a falling out with Hoover. He was scheduled to be questioned by the Assassinations Committee in 1977. As mentioned earlier, he was found shot dead in a shooting accident having been mistaken for a deer. He had been head of the FBI’s Division Five, which handled the King and Kennedy investigations. There was a claim by William Sullivan’s friend Robert Novak that William Sullivan specifically predicted that his own death by the following words “Someday you will read that I have been killed in an accident, but don’t believe it; I’ve been murdered.”

Louis Nicholas-special assistant to J. Edgar Hoover and his liaison with the Warren Commission died from HEART ATTACK in June 1977 with no evidence of foul play. He was a Former No. 3 man in FBI who worked on JFK assassination investigation.

Alan H. Belmont– special assistant to Hoover died in August 1977 from NATURAL CAUSES due to a long illness” with no evidence of foul play. He had previously testified to the Warren Commission.

James Cadigan – FBI document expert with access to documents that related to death of John F. Kennedy DIED FROM A FALL in his home in August 1977 with no evidence of foul play. He had previously testified to the Warren Commission.

J. M. English headed the FBI laboratory where Oswald’s rifle and pistol were tested. He was former head of FBI Forensic Sciences Laboratory died in October 1977 from Heart Attack with no evidence of foul play.

Donald Kaylor was FBI fingerprint expert examined prints found at the assassination scene. He was one of hundreds of FBI employees with marginal connection to assassination who died in October 1977. He was a FBI fingerprint chemist who examined prints found at the assassination scene and the cause of death was from HEART ATTACK.

None of these six bureau officials lived to tell what they knew to the House committee.

ALSO Regis Kennedy Regis Kennedy- Heart attack on the day he was to testify on confiscation of home movies of assassination.