Why is James Files in prison?
Well, the official account is “attempted murder of a police officer”. However, as with the official version of the JFK assassination, a closer look reveals something different. On these pages we are giving you two sides of the story of the conviction of James Files and his partner David Morley.
To wrap up the official story: Morley and Files were car-chased by two police officers. When the officers forced them to stop, Files and Morley opened fire. Morley shot David Ostertag, one of the cops. That one shot was not fatal, he recovered from his wounds. Case closed: Attempted 1st degree murder of a police officer. Sentence: two consecutive prison terms of 15 years each.
But Files and Morley say something else, namely that the two police officers tried to kill them and it was the officers who opened fire. Let’s investigate both sides of the story.
To see David Morley’s mugshot and sentence information click here
To see James Files’ mugshot and sentence information click here
To view the official account of the story click here
Let’s see what James Files has to say:
J – Why don’t you briefly tell why you are in prison right now?
JF – I am in prison for a specific reason. When I came out of the federal prison, I did a federal stretch and I was out for a little while and people started trying to kill me. When they started trying to kill me, the first time I was at Quentin road and Rilings, at Rilings Lake Beach, shortly past midnight, driving a little Chevy Chevette. And the cops had been harrassing me , they knew who I was. Every time they see me, they handcuffed me, get me out of the car, my papers, blew out my stuff all down the street. Well, in this particular night, I had pulled up the stoplight there, I am on Quentin road, fixed to make a right hand turn on Rilings road. I’m staying on my end (inaudible) this time about two blocks down from there.
I looked up in the rearview mirror and I see this car pulling up behind me with no lights, next lane. And I thought: Shit, cops again! You know, I ‘m going to get hassled again. It’s not a squad car, but I figured it’s just detectives, you know. As it pulls up alongside of me, I’m looking in the mirror sitting by the door, the little door there on my side, and I see an SMG coming up. For anybody who doesn’t know what that is, it’s a small machine gun, an automatic weapon, and as I see it coming out of the window, I roll accross the seat, hit the door , hit the ground, roll back up against the (inaudible) of the car. They put 30 holes in my car! Four clips they put into it. As they were pulling away, I come up off the ground on my feet , so I got off about four rounds. I’m on federal parole at that point, I’m not supposed to be carrying a weapon, but you never find me without a weapon. I got off four rounds, took the back window out, they kept going. I jumped back in my car, took a right onto Rilings road, went down to Grove Avenue, pulled into the house at (inaudible) 1620 Grove, went in there and got the tarp from my uncle out of the garage and put it over the car, so they couldn’t see the bullet holes. That was the first attempt on my life.
J – When was that?
JF – Aah, I got out of federal prison in ’88. This year was late ’89 or early 90 I guess.
J – Has there been any attempt on your life in prison?
JF – Not in prison. I had a lot of fights, but that’s not attempts on my life. I mean the things that happen here is just day-to-day living . I got a few scars from knives here and there, but that’s irrelevant there.
J – You don’t think it was people trying to take you out?
JF – Oh no, definitely not.
J – Well then, it doesn’t have anything to do with the JFK job?
JF – No, definitely not. And when they started trying to kill me on the street, after the first attempt on my life in the free world, as I call it: Next day I went to see somebody down in the city and I wanted to ask him a specific question: If we had a problem? I said I did my federal time. I got busted on the chop shops. I didn’t take nobody down with me. I said I went and kept my mouth shut, I didn’t testify, I didn’t give nobody up. I took the conviction, I have done my time. What is the problem? We got a problem? Let me know! And he told me: Jimmy – he always called me Jimmy – Jimmy boy, he says: Calm down, calm down! He says: Listen to me, he said: You got no problem with us! You did your things. He says: Hey, you didn’t have no problems when you got down, you got money, we looked after certain people for you, took care of your family, you had no problems! When you came out , you went to the restaurant, everybody parked, everybody came by to see you. We dropped a lot of envelopes. He said: You have money when you come out. Everybody looked after you when you came out! That’s respect! Don’t think we are after you! Whatever you ‘ve done, that’s with your previous employers, not us! That’s only the other side of the fence with people you worked for before. He said: No, not us, Jimmy, I’ll give you my word on that!
The second attempt I was on my motorcycle and it’s a long story and I won’t go with you all through that …
J – Hold a minute, so you are saying that attempt was not the mob, that was the Agency?
JF – That was the Agency, that was the government, somebody in the government!
J – So the government has tried to take you out ?
JF – That’s what I honestly believe!
J – Okay, make a statement.
JF – Now then, the second time on my attempt, … or are you talking about making a statement on the government?
J – Yeah
JF – After I talked to a certain party in Chicago down there in the city, about them trying to kill me, he was telling me that was my previous employers. What we’re talking about here, is we ‘re talking about a government agency. I won’t say which agency it was trying to take me out, but at the time I had people with the DOD on me, because I had taken certain material off the computer at Oxford, from the arsenals that I worked, I had an access to classified materials there for building new tanks, new helicopters, everything (inaudible) with black hawk helicopters. I had the keys for everything, I had the range of firing, everything was classified because we made a lot of the stuff there. We made the nitrene? cable to fire the sidewinder missile, inside the federal prison.
Anyway, the second attempt, was .. – now I realize this is not the crime family that is after me, it has to be a government agency, the second attempt on my life was late at night, they ran me over on my motorcycle. They hit me so hard, they bent the frame on it. They towed the motorcycle out. That’s all on record.
Next time that comes around, the third time, were these two off-duty officers. One of them is David Ostertag. They will never admit they had a contract on my life and I want to state here: I have no hard feelings against either one of these officers, even though they tried to kill me. I don’t take this as anything personal. I think that they were doing a job. They were doing what they were paid to do. They just blew it! But the thing is this: I’m here because somebody opened up on my partner and me, they tried to kill us in broad daylight on May 7th, 1991, 3:15 PM, maybe 3:30, at the middle of route 12 in a little place called Buffalo Grove. We were between Quentin road and Long Grove road on route 12. They forced us off the road, when they forced us off the road – they say it was a high speed chase, it really wasn’t a high speed chase, they spotted me at a gas station, I didnt even see them, I paid for the gas, got in the car with my partner David Morley, he was driving.
And we pulled out from there, they got in behind us. As they got up alongside, he started hitting the gas to go and I told him: No hold on! Pull over, we don’t run from nobody! My exact words were: Fuck ‘m, we don’t run! Pull it over! We’ll deal with it! As they cut us off, it’s like he pulled into what was part of a driveway, it was gravel, a little fast, he hit the brakes and he littered a low tree. The tree we hit, wasn’t any bigger than my arm. I threw the door open on my right hand side, to exit the car, this was a leased car, and after I opened the door to exit, they drove their car, which is a white unmarked car, into the side of our car. While I see the front of their car coming at the door, I jerked my leg back above the ground so I wouldn’t get it cut off there and broken, and duck my head. And then they hit the door, the door hit me and knocked me back into the car and I bounced off the dash. And at that point, they opened fire. My partner David Morley, very good man, he saved my life on several occassions in the free world, his left hand is paralyzed, he has been shot a couple of times in shootouts. He can’t use his left hand. At this point he’s leaning down, fumbling under the seat of the car looking for his gun. Looking for a 9 mm. And I’m yelling: Get out! Get out! Get out!
And to me it seems like it’s taking forever. When he got the 9, he put it up under his arm, he’s gotta close that arm, he reached across, to open the door to exit. Well, this is only a few seconds, but it seems like a lifetime to me. And we come out of the car and when he comes out, he took the first shot: David Ostertag went down. At this point I come out, there’s no need for me to even shoot. The other officer, Bitler – and I didn’t know they were cops at that time, neither did my partner, we had no idea they were police officers – he crawled up under the car. And he was screaming I guess: They’re gonna kill us both! They’re gonna kill us both! David Ostertag was already down. I grabbed the AK-47 out of the car, had it in the backseat. I had one picked out from the storage shed for a simple reason: I had a meeting prior to those people and somebody had poked me in the chest, and I just knocked him down and stumped on him a couple of times, and told him: Don’t ever threaten me to tell me you’re gonna trunk me! If you do, do it first and then come and tell me that you’ve done it! I went to tell David: We ‘ve got problems, I want to get the AK-47 out, got the ammo-can out., I had a 30-round clip in the AK-47, this is all in the logbooks, the ammo-can had 500 rounds of ammo in it. David Ostertag can tell you how many rounds we had for the 9 mm, the clips and all the loose rounds.
I went into a little swamp, it took them several hours to get me out. The AK-47, the tracker spring broke, it wouldn’t fire. (Note: Actually when the police found James Files in the swamp, he was under water, breathing through a cane stick, which is indicative of CIA training)
W – Any witnesses to all this?
JF – A lot of people around. A lot of people. We had traffic backed up from the shooting incident there all the way to Wisconsin and all the way to the city of Chicago.
J – So who opened fire first?
JF – They opened fire first!
J – And they were in an unmarked car?
JF – Unmarked car!
J – Plain clothes?
JF – Plain clothes. They had a windbreaker on, they were wearing a badge under their gunbelt underneath the windbreaker jackets, sitting in the car. They were shooting from inside the car. David Ostertag had exited and was coming around and shooting when David Morley dropped him.
W – Did they ever say you were under arrest or..?
JF – No.
J – Did they identify themselves, did they yell: Police officer ?
JF- Nobody identified nothing. I mean: The shooting started.
W- How many shots were fired before your partner took the shot?
JF – Well I’m gonna say they got off probably the first 14 shots. They say they fired 3 and 11 out of 52. They said we fired the rest of them. But there’s not that many shell casings on hand. And if the only weapons that were fired, were 9 mm’s that day, and my weapon hadn’t been fired, that leaves 3 clips. It’s only 45 rounds. There’s 15 rounds to a 9 mm in a staggered clip. And they didn’t fire that many, they still had rounds in theirs. So there’s no way that 52 rounds were fired that day.
W – Are there witness reports on record?
JF – Oh, there’s all kinds witnesses that have seen what went down. There’s witnesses that plainly state as to who got out, who shot who, and who shot first. That’s all in the court documents.
J – So how did they get a conviction if there are witnesses to say they fired first?
JF – That was very simple: We were tried in Lake County, Illinois. It didn’t take them long to convict us. Everybody on the jury was related to a cop. You don’t shoot a cop and walk away. If you shoot a cop, it don’t matter whether it was self-defense or not.
W – Were these witness reports allowed? As evidence?
JF – Some of those were denied. I had witnesses that had come here to testify on my behalf and that was irrelevant and they were not permitted to testify. My own aunt was not permitted to testify at my trial.
W – So this was a frame-up?
JF – As far as I’m concerned, it was a frame-up. It was self-defense. Over and out. And I didn’t even shoot nobody.
To view some of the signed witness reports click here
We also received an email from a close friend of James Files:
Mr. Ostertag and I spoke on January 3, 2003 when he returned my call placed at the States Attorney’s Office when I tried to contact him there. Ostertag is a retired police detective for Round Lake Beach and also a retired detective for the Lake County States Attorney’s Office.
As of January 2003, in addition to working for Discover Card, he also gives new police recruits talks about being shot in the line of duty. This shoot out incident with Dave Morley and James Files was the only time he was ever shot. Ostertag and his partner never identified themselves as police officers and did not say “you’re under arrest”. Ostertag and Gary Bitler started the shooting May 7, 1991 and Dave Morley returned fire when Ostertag was hit. James Files did not shoot a weapon that day. Dave Morley and James Files are in their 12th going on 13th year of prison for this case of self-defense.
Don’t expect cooperation with Dave Ostertag. He has his story and Jimmy, Dave Morley, and two sworn eyewitnesses have their version. He told me that he hopes James Files stays in prison the rest of his life and never wants to see him get out. When I brought up the subject, Ostertag also thinks there needs to be a debriefing and counseling program for Special Forces men returning to civilian life. He wishes that he was warned what he was up against to take out James Files. He feels betrayed by the government agencies who could have provided him that information. (FBI and CIA) When I asked him if he was paid to kill James Files he just laughed it off and did not answer me. We spoke for about 45 minutes to an hour. I tried to explain that Jimmy is now a Christian and poses no harm to him or his family. He didn’t care.
Pam
This picture was emailed to us by Mrs. Ray with the following information: “If you want, you can post this picture on the website with this information from me.
Pam”
This picture was taken shortly before Jimmy went to Stateville. The shoot out incident May 7, 1991, with Ostertag and Bitler was the third unsuccessful attempt at killing James Files for what he believes is a “clean-up” operation to eliminate anyone, like Jimmy, who has first hand knowledge of the Mena -Bush -Clinton Cartel drug operations. He does not believe the attempts on his life were for his involvement with the JFK assassination. Files also believes this sensitive area of CIA/DEA US GOVERNMENT Drug operations is why Clinton and Reno classified James Files as a threat to National Security. That and James Files also wrote terrorist manuals called “CBW’s” for George Bush’s CIA in the 1970’s.
Conclusion
James Files has killed many many persons. No sane person will resent a penalty for that. Part of his killings were on the battlefields of Laos, another part were contract murders for organized crime, but many were executions on orders of a part of the government, that seems accountable to no one. According to Files, the FBI and the CIA have known about his participation in JFK’s assassination since 1964, as well as many more government-sanctioned “black operations” since then. He also killed people on orders of the CIA just because they knew something or witnessed the “wrong” things.
Like we see so often in this milieu, the soldiers that know too much or become otherwise a liabilty, are silenced by “executive action”, as they label it so nicely. James Files tells us that he survived at least three such attempts, before it was decided to go for the next best option: Lock him away for the remainder of his life. No tears should be shed about his incarceration, but if James Files and two sworn eye-witnesses are telling the truth, the real injustice is this:
The people that exploited men like Files, and actually ordered many of his murders, have not been brought to justice. They knew or know about numerous murders he did. Yet they put him away for one he did not even attempt. Can the american system be that corrupt? We believe it can. Just like the overwhelming majority of the american people who believe that JFK’s assassination was a conspiracy up to the highest levels of the government, subsequently covered up by that same government. This is also why, as long as these people are in charge, the JFK Assassination will never be brought to justice. However, this does not stop us from learning the true events.
