Maheu on Harvey

[Chris Newton]

Church Committee Sep 23, 1975

Mr Postal. Do you know William Harvey?

Mr Maheu. I may have met Harvey. I do not recall that I did. I know the name.

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1347&relPageId=36

Lines 1 & 2

 

 

While reviewing the responsive documents to 2016 FOIA, the following "coincidence" noted.

https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/william-king-harvey-federal-bureau-of-investigation-23159/#comms

[Paul Brancato]

Quite a conincidence. I always wonder about the ex FBI ex Hoover agents whether they had ongoing communications with Hoover, especially Guy Banister.

[Chris Newton]

The FBI Academy was completed in the spring of 1940. I believe that it's possible this was one of the first "classes" to graduate in December 1940.

 

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54dc6b0be4b0d364a5ee20e0/54dc6cb3e4b0658f0cbac2c7/54dc6cb3e4b0658f0cbac2ca/1302357962783/quantico.pdf

[Pat Speer]

This is pretty interesting. Maheu was the CIA's original middle man to the mafia for the attempts on Castro. After this collapsed, the CIA started it up anew, with Harvey as the middle man to the mafia for the attempts on Castro. Both Maheu and Harvey were close friends with Roselli, the CIA's contact within the mafia.

It seems doubtful this was a coincidence. Can anyone place Maheu, Harvey, and Roselli together during the run-up to Kennedy's assassination? Now that would be something...

Edited November 9, 2016 by Pat Speer

[Larry Hancock]

When Harvey entered the picture with Roselli he bluntly told Roselli to stop talking to everyone who had been involved in the first attempts and to work only with him.  As far as we can tell Roselli bonded so tightly with Harvey that he did just that.  I don't think I've ever seen any sign of Meheu being connected to the second phase under Harvey - a starting point would be to take a close look at the research that discusses who Meheu was actually in contact with at the agency when he was doing his main work for them - which was in the 50's and consisted mostly of work against foreign diplomats in the United States. I would suspect that Meheu knew Harvey's name from his work in support of domestic CI activities in the 1950's, that would be a good fit with Harvey's duties. However as a contractor, its also likely he never had an extended relationship with him beyond that. 

[Pat Speer]

If I remember correctly, the CIA honchos running Maheu iin the first phase of the attempts on Castro were Sheffield Edwards and James O'Connell. Did they have a close connection to Harvey?

As far as Maheu/Roselli, they knew each other from before the assassination attempts and afterwards. They even shared the same lawyer, Edward Morgan, who leaked the "Bobby tried to kill Castro but Castro killed Jack first" story to Drew Pearson in 1967, to gain leverage for his clients. (Roselli was in trouble for his involvement in a crooked card game, and Maheu was being investigated for his ongoing involvement in illegal wiretapping.)

It seems possible, then--seeing as Harvey took to socializing with Roselli--that the two of them had a visit or two with Maheu in Vegas, when Maheu was running things for Hughes. If such a meeting ever occurred, it could be related to the RFK assassination, IMO. 

Edited November 9, 2016 by Pat Speer

[Larry Hancock]

Meheu's connections were with the Office of Security, which typically vetted and recommended domestic assets to folks in CI and Staff D...which means both Angleton and Harvey.  In regard to Roselli we have virtually day by day FBI surveillance on him beginning in 62.  No sign of meetings with Harvey in Las Vegas, Roselli typically went to Florida for that.  And given that Hoover and the FBI were already all over Mehau, the phase 1 Castro assassinations etc you can bet they would be watching for any further contacts with anyone from the CIA or for Meheu who was known to them from the earlier bugging incident. The FBI was watching Roselli closely enough to record all his contacts with Harvey, which proved bad news for both of them in the long term.  Don't think Meheu ever showed up on the radar in that monitoring.

[James DiEugenio]

Larry:

 

When you say Maheu was doing his main work for the CIA in the fifties, do you disregard what he was doing with Hughes later on?  As many people have commented, by that time it was hard to see where Hughes' empire stopped and the CIA began. For instance, it was later found out that Hughes Medical Center was nothing but a CIA shell company.

 And you must know that Angleton attended Hughes' alleged funeral. (I say alleged, because the circumstances of Hughes's death are clouded by secrecy, contradiction,and differing testimony.)

In my opinion, and a few others, the whole expulsion of Maheu from Las Vegas and Hughes empire posits so many questions about Hughes, as does the alleged robbery at Summa Corporation--which as Jim Hougan demonstrated,  was not really a robbery but an inside job--that it  raises very serious questions about who really expelled Maheu and why.  

As does the appearance of FBI/CIA asset James Phelan's cover up book so quickly after Hughes allegedly died. I am sure you know how close Maheu and Phelan were.  Phelan used Maheu's office to copy the documents that an unsuspecting Jim Garrison gave him during their long interview in Vegas. Phelan's book was a top secret project at Random House under the strict control of CIA toady Robert Loomis.

From all of these facts, and more, one can make a reasonable case that Maheu was working as a CIA proxy through, and even after, his work for Hughes.

Edited November 9, 2016 by James DiEugenio

[Larry Hancock]

Jim, yes indeed I was talking about prior to 63 which is what I felt would be relevant to the assassination and what Pat had posted on in regard to any direct contact with Harvey circa 63.  What would be going on post assassination wasn't what I was thinking of an although I know what Roselli was doing in some detail I couldn't speak to the Hughes connection to the CIA beyond his association as a cover company and contractor. I'm sure there was an extended relationship there, just something I don't have enough info to comment on...

[Chris Newton]

I started taking a close look at some of the other possible relationships in these files regarding Harvey.

It seems that Lish Whitson had been a social acquaintance and referral on Harvey's CIG application in 1947. The CIG's background check reveals the FBI's Rosen sending a memo to D.M Ladd (Head of FBI's Security Division where Whitson works) who then writes Lish requesting his comments (shown in link below).

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=113782&search=Lish_and+whitson#relPageId=2&tab=page

or entire memo thread contained here:

https://d3gn0r3afghep.cloudfront.net/foia_files/2016/03/31/1342534-0_-_Part_3.PDF

The next time Harvey's good friend Lish Whitson's name shows up is in a memo concerning a certain Minox Camera. Small World.

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=62267&relPageId=181&search=Lish_and whitson

 

 

[Joe Bauer]

Chris Newton, just an odd/funny little coincidence regarding the list you posted of new agents entered on December 9th, 1940.

In the James Bond film "Diamonds Are Forever"  the Las Vegas "Howard Hughes" suggestive character as portrayed by the famous country singer "Jimmy Dean" ... was named "Willard White."

A person with that same weird name ..."Willard White" ... also just happens to be on that list of new agents.

[Joe Bauer]

Also, notice that another name on that list "Evelle J. Younger"  later became California's Attorney General from 1971 thru 1979.

He later mounted a run for the Governorship against Jerry Brown. 

And check out Younger's Wiki page.

Same intriguing intelligence connections as Maheu and Harvey.

 

 

 

 

Edited November 10, 2016 by Joe Bauer

[Peter McGuire]

22 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Larry:

 

When you say Maheu was doing his main work for the CIA in the fifties, do you disregard what he was doing with Hughes later on?  As many people have commented, by that time it was hard to see where Hughes' empire stopped and the CIA began. For instance, it was later found out that Hughes Medical Center was nothing but a CIA shell company.

 And you must know that Angleton attended Hughes' alleged funeral. (I say alleged, because the circumstances of Hughes's death are clouded by secrecy, contradiction,and differing testimony.)

In my opinion, and a few others, the whole expulsion of Maheu from Las Vegas and Hughes empire posits so many questions about Hughes, as does the alleged robbery at Summa Corporation--which as Jim Hougan demonstrated,  was not really a robbery but an inside job--that it  raises very serious questions about who really expelled Maheu and why.  

As does the appearance of FBI/CIA asset James Phelan's cover up book so quickly after Hughes allegedly died. I am sure you know how close Maheu and Phelan were.  Phelan used Maheu's office to copy the documents that an unsuspecting Jim Garrison gave him during their long interview in Vegas. Phelan's book was a top secret project at Random House under the strict control of CIA toady Robert Loomis.

From all of these facts, and more, one can make a reasonable case that Maheu was working as a CIA proxy through, and even after, his work for Hughes.

Jim, I was first read about Maheu when reading a biography of Hughes. That was before I read about the Kennedy assassination. Have you written in detail about Hughesgate in one of your books? I read this biography around 1985.

Edited November 10, 2016 by Peter McGuire

[James DiEugenio]

I talked about it on BOR once, long ago.

But I will revisit it once Warren Beatty's movie comes out at Bob Parry's Consortium News.

[Pat Speer]

FWIW, I have a strange connection to the Maheu/Hughes story. This connection helped pull me into this whole mess. I have discussed this before but some not familiar with the story might find it intriguing, and/or amusing.

1. Shortly after I started looking into the assassinations of the 1960's (This was approximately twelve years ago) I stumbled upon Robert Maheu's autobiography. There, he mentioned meeting a man on a plane flight from Tampa, and becoming close friends with this man as a result. This man was a Texas oilman named Johnny Mitchell. Mitchell was pretty much the only non-CIA, non-FBI, non-Mafia, non-politician, and non-Howard Hughes-connected person mentioned in the book. In any event, I did some digging on Mitchell and found out that he and his brothers were close friends with the Maceo family (the mob bosses of Houston and Galveston) when they were growing up. I found out as well that his youngest brother George was at that time (2004?) one of George W. Bush's top supporters.  Now, here's the kicker... I knew Johnny Mitchell. He was my dad's boss from when I was around four years old till when I was around 7 years old. He wore a white cowboy hat and a suit, Texas-style, and gave my older brother and I silver dollars (or was it Kennedy-halves?) whenever he came by the house.

2. A year or so later, while continuing to consume material on Hughes and Maheu, I came across Citizen Hughes, by Michael Drosnin. While writing this book, Drosnin identified the man who'd stolen Hughes' notes to Maheu, which were being stored in a lock-up of Hughes' possessions in Hollywood. He tracked this man down, and convinced the man to describe the break-in and theft of Hughes' stuff, which was never recovered. And he even convinced the man to sell him--Drosnin--Hughes' notes to Maheu. These notes were re-printed in the book. (We should recall here that the theft of these notes was pretty big news at the time. The theft of these notes--which the CIA presumed included the top secret detail that Hughes' Glomar Explorer undersea mining vessel was really a CIA-financed specialized ship designed to retrieve a downed Russian nuclear sub from the bottom of the ocean floor--had led CIA director William Colby to explain the situation to a number of news outlets, so that they wouldn't unwittingly reveal a government secret.) In any event, while reading this book, I found that I once again knew one of the characters.  From reading other books on the break-in, I'd come to realize that one of the men charged (but strangely never convicted) with trying to sell Hughes' notes back to Hughes' company was a friend of my mom's old boyfriend, with whom my mom had socialized. This man was the actor Leo Gordon. Now I knew Gordon had started his acting career as a heavy, and that he'd been a criminal. And I also knew that he was a huge WWII buff, which culminated in his writing/directing the film Tobruk. So it was clear to me from reading Drosnin's description of the man behind the break-in that this was Gordon, and that Gordon had simply lied when he claimed he'd tried to sell the Hughes notes back to Hughes' company on behalf of someone else. But that wasn't the most surprising part. The most surprising part was that in Drosnin's account of the break-in, in which the names of the participants' were concealed, the job description, vehicle driven by, and obnoxious behavior of one of the men matched my mom's former boyfriend to a T.  And from there I put two and two together... My mom's former boyfriend moved in with us around the time of the break-in. He'd had a sudden influx of cash. With this money he started a welding business in a sketchy part of town, for which he also paid cash. He then lived with us for a year and a half or so, after which he disappeared from our lives forever., while leaving his dogs behind. After thinking about this, moreover, a strange memory came to the surface. (While I suspect this memory is based in reality, I accept that it could be some sort of mish-mash of a number of incidents.) In this memory, my mom's former boyfriend showed me a German Luger he'd been hiding under my mom's bed, and asked me who I thought had at one time owned this Luger. To which I stupidly replied "Hitler." And to which he proudly teased me with: "What if I was to tell you this used to belong to Howard Hughes?"