Cartha (Deke) DeLoach

[John Simkin]

Cartha (Deke) DeLoach was born in 1920. He joined the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1942 as a clerk in the Identification Division.

In 1948 DeLoach replaced John Doherty as FBI's liaison officer to the Central Intelligence Agency. His main source of contact was Sheffield Edwards. According to Mark Riebling (Wedge) DeLoach had to persuade Frank Wisner to stop some of the CIA more outlandish operations. Riebling quotes Deloach as saying: "Guys, you can't do that. Your operation just won't work, it's gonna blow. People suspect you. They know damn well you're not defense. You aren't properly backstopped."

According to Ronald Kessler (The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI), DeLoach attempted to blackmail Senator Carl T. Hayden, chair of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, into following the instructions of J. Edgar Hoover. William C. Sullivan (The Bureau: My Thirty Years in Hoover's FBI) points out that Hoover selected DeLoach as his liaison to Lyndon B. Johnson when leader of the Senate.

DeLoach was involved in the investigation of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. In one memo sent to Clyde Tolson, DeLoach claimed that Lyndon B. Johnson "felt the CIA had something to do with the plot" to kill Kennedy. William C. Sullivan argued that by 1964 Deloach was a "member of Johnson's inner circle... and had a direct line to LBJ's White House". This included providing information from FBI files on Barry Goldwater during the presidential campaign of 1964.

In 1965 DeLoach was promoted to deputy director of the FBI. He held this position until he resigned in 1970 to work for Donald Kendall, who was a close friend of Lyndon Johnson.

In 1975 retired FBI Special Agent Arthur Murtagh testified before the House Select Committee on Intelligence about the time DeLoach told him: "The other night, we picked up a situation where this senator was seen drunk, in a hit-and-run accident, and some good-looking broad was with him. We got the information, reported it in a memorandum, and by noon the next day, the senator was aware that we had the information, and we never had trouble with him on appropriations since.

Cartha (Deke) DeLoach published Hoover's FBI in 1995.

Anymore information on DeLoach?

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKdeloach.htm

[John Dolva]

http://www.mdah.state.ms.us/arlib/contents...magelisting.php

a small selection. Scroll down, enter DeLoach for search, get list and scroll through each to further links.

(Peripheral links lead to such things as school text book analysis', matters relating to Mockingbird etc.)

[John Simkin]

Cartha DeLoach needs more research as he worked closely with Lyndon Johnson before the assassination of JFK. DeLoach used FBI files to blackmail politicians for both Hoover and Johnson. This is what William C. Sullivan says about the relationship in The Bureau: My Thirty Years in Hoover's FBI (1979)

If Jack Kennedy's death shocked and worried Johnson, it also made him warier than ever of Bobby and Teddy Kennedy. Johnson believed that both surviving Kennedy brothers had presidential ambitions, and as president he saw himself as their natural enemy and acted accordingly. Threatened by Bobby in particular, he was afraid that there would be a groundswell of support for Kennedy's nomination as vice-president at the Democratic convention in Atlantic City where LBJ, an "accidental president," sought the unanimous support of his party. Johnson wanted to choose his own running mate, and Bobby Kennedy was definitely not on his list of possible choices.

Since Johnson felt he had to protect himself against any last minute surprises from the Kennedy camp, he turned to the FBI for help. He asked Hoover for a special security team of a dozen or so agents to be headed by Cartha D. ("Deke") DeLoach, Courtney Evans's successor to the job of White House liaison. Ostensibly the agents would be there to guard against threats to the president, but this security force was actually a surveillance team, a continuation of the FBI's surveillance on Martin Luther King in Atlantic City. By keeping track of King, LBJ could also keep track of RFK.

With the help of the FBI, Johnson spied on Teddy Kennedy during a trip Kennedy made to Italy. One of our agents heard that Lucky Luciano, the American mob boss who had been deported to his native Italy by the federal government, had carried on a conversation with Kennedy in a restaurant in Rome. Actually, we learned that the conversation was completely innocent on Kennedy's part. Luciano had approached Kennedy in an effort to get help in his plea to be allowed to return to the United States to die, and Kennedy had refused. The agent, who knew that Hoover would be interested in anything on the subject, reported the incident to Washington. Hoover used that report as an excuse to investigate Kennedy to see if he had any ties to organized crime. We conducted a discreet but massive investigation and found out what everyone had known all along: that Kennedy was opposed to organized crime in every way, and always had been.

In 1965 Johnson used the FBI to set up Teddy Kennedy. Teddy had come to Johnson seeking a federal judgeship for Frank Morrissey, a Kennedy family friend and former aid to JFK. Johnson agreed to nominate Morrissey, but as soon as Kennedy was out the door of the Oval office, LBJ was on the phone to DeLoach ordering an all-out FBI investigation of the Boston lawyer. It was one of the most exhaustive investigations of its kind we ever conducted, far more so than our puny investigation of G. Harrold Carswell when he was nominated to the Supreme Court. We went all out on Morrissey, but we didn't find much. The worst that anyone could say about Morrissey was that he had an average reputation as a lawyer. As the courts were filled with mediocre judges who had attended undistinguished law schools, many of them put there by Johnson, Morrissey seemed to be in the clear. But a few days after Johnson received the FBI report on Morrissey, stories began appearing in newspapers and magazines calling him unqualified for the job, stories that were leaked to the press by the White House, citing his unimpressive legal and academic background as proof. It was a deliberate smear and it worked. An embarrassed Teddy Kennedy was forced to ask LBJ to withdraw the nomination.

[John Dolva]

DeLoach was also the contact of FBI informant Fay Leon Blunt.

Blunt reported the existence of witnesses on the fifth floor of Dallas County Court building.

Blunt seems to have disappeared after the WC report.

[Pat Speer]

I've read some on Deloach, including most of his book, and consider him a mixed bag. He certainly tells the truth some of the time. In his oral history with the LBJ Library he admits that Johnson never believed the Warren Report and was always asking Deloach if he thought the CIA killed Kennedy. Deloach says he always told Johnson that "we've already looked into this and it was Oswald", or something to that effect. The Church Committee uncovered a April 4, 1967 FBI document from Deloach in which he discussed Johnson's suspicions that Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy. Deloach also dishes some good dirt in his own book. He says that, on the night of the assassination, Hoover was outraged that Dallas Police Chief Curry told the press that the FBI knew all about Oswald but failed to act, and Hoover decided right then and there to ruin Curry's career. He says that Hoover called up his friends in Dallas (read Murchison) and got them to bring Curry into line, and that, outside the Kennedy assassination, Hoover forbade the FBI crime lab from helping the DPD until Curry was removed as Chief of Police.

[John Hunt]

Cartha (Deke) DeLoach was born in 1920. He joined the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1942 as a clerk in the Identification Division.

"In one memo sent to Clyde Tolson, DeLoach claimed that Lyndon B. Johnson "felt the CIA had something to do with the plot" to kill Kennedy."

Do you have an image of that document or the RIF #??

John Hunt

[Pat Speer]

More dirt on Deloach. Acccordng to former FBI Assistant Director William Sullivan in his interview with the Church Committee staff, Deloach was the one who leaked the FBI's Summary Report (conveniently blaming Oswald) to the press in December 1963.

Edited August 10, 2006 by Pat Speer

[John Simkin]

Cartha (Deke) DeLoach has died aged 92.

According to Ronald Kessler, the author of The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI (2002) DeLoach successfully blackmailed Senator Carl T. Hayden, chair of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, into following the instructions of J. Edgar Hoover. In April 1962, Roy L. Elson, Hayden's administrative assistant, questioned Hayden's decision to approve the $60 million cost of the FBI building. When he discovered what Elson was saying, DeLoach "hinted" that he had "information that was unflattering and detrimental to my marital situation... I was certainly vulnerable that way... There was more than one girl... The implication was there was information about my sex life... I interpreted it as attempted blackmail."

FBI Special Agent Arthur Murtagh also testified that DeLoach was involved in the blackmail of politicians on government committees. He claimed that DeLoach told him in November 1963: "The other night, we picked up a siuation where this senator was seen drunk, in a hit-and-run accident, and some good-looking broad was with him. We got the information, reported it in a memorandum, and by noon the next day, the senator was aware that we had the information, and we never had trouble with him on appropriations since."

The day following the assassination of John F. Kennedy, President Lyndon B. Johnson, called J. Edgar Hoover and requested that DeLoach be assigned to the White House. DeLoach was involved in the investigation of the assassination of Kennedy. In one memo sent to Clyde Tolson, DeLoach claimed that Johnson "felt the CIA had something to do with the plot" to kill Kennedy. William C. Sullivan argued in The Bureau: My Thirty Years in Hoover's FBI (1979): "Since Johnson felt he had to protect himself against any last minute surprises from the Kennedy camp, he turned to the FBI for help. He asked Hoover for a special security team of a dozen or so agents to be headed by Cartha D. ("Deke") DeLoach, Courtney Evans's successor to the job of White House liaison. Ostensibly the agents would be there to guard against threats to the president, but this security force was actually a surveillance team, a continuation of the FBI's surveillance on Martin Luther King in Atlantic City. By keeping track of King, LBJ could also keep track of RFK. With the help of the FBI, Johnson spied on Teddy Kennedy during a trip Kennedy made to Italy."

In an interview DeLoach gave in 1991 he claimed: "Mr. Hoover was anxious to retain his job and to stay on as director. He knew that the best way for the F.B.I. to operate fully and to get some cooperation of the White House was for him to be cooperative with President Johnson... President Johnson, on the other hand, knew of Mr. Hoover’s image in the United States, particularly among the middle-of-the-road conservative elements, and knew it was vast. He knew of the potential strength of the F.B.I. - insofar as being of assistance to the government and the White House is concerned. As a result it was a marriage, not altogether of necessity, but it was a definite friendship caused by necessity.”

William C. Sullivan pointed out that by 1964 Deloach was a "member of Johnson's inner circle... and had a direct line to LBJ's White House". This included providing information from FBI files on Barry Goldwater during the presidential campaign of 1964. Tim Weiner, the author of Enemies: A History of the F.B.I. (2012) has argued: “DeLoach was always at L.B.J.’s beck and call, night and day... He was a talented political hatchet man, a trusted deputy to Hoover. He was also crucial to intelligence investigations conducted during the Johnson presidency.”

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKdeloach.htm