Hemming on the Männlicher Carcano, scope and ammo

[Greg Burnham]

[Steven Gaal]

deep background rifile

http://www.giljesus.com/jfk/rifle.htm

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Jim Hargrove (deep politics forum)

LEE Oswald and Gunrunner Robert McKeown

John Armstrong asked me to post this for him:

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I would like to share a thought with JFK researchers interested in Oswald's alleged purchase of the rifle.

While HARVEY and Marina were in New Orleans (specifically, at Lake Pontchartrain with the Murrets), LEE Oswald arrived at Robert McKeown's home in Baytown, TX (early Sept, 1963, Saturday morning). LEE Oswald introduced himself to McKeown and repeatedly asked McKeown to acquire and sell rifles to him. McKeown had previously supplied guns and armaments to Castro, and had become a very close personal friend of Castro. McKeown refused to sell rifles to Oswald and he left. If Oswald had purchased a rifle from McKeown, then that rifle would have been found on the 6th floor of the TSBD and an irrefutable link from Oswald to Castro would have been established.

Oswald's attempt to purchase a rifle from McKeown occurred during the first week in Sept., 1963. The thought occurred to me that as of September, the "plotters" had not yet chosen/selected the rifle to be placed on the 6th floor. The FBI took possession of the original Klein's microfilm in the early morning hours of 11/23/63. Photographs of Klein's documents showing that Oswald purchased a MC rifle, allegedly taken from the microfilm, were shown to Klein's VP Waldman for identification (as was the money order). The microfilm subsequently disappeared (not in the National Archives) and FBI photographs are all that remain.

McKeown was interviewed for several hours by the HSCA (I have tape recordings of his interview, obtained from the National Archives). Oswald and McKeown's meeting was discussed at length in Harvey and Lee.

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In John's book, he says that McKeown ran a coffee processing plant in Santiago in the early 1950s with the blessing of Carlos Prio, who was overthrown by Batista in 1952. McKeown was deported by the Batista regime when it was discovered he was supplying weapons to Prio's backers.

By 1956 McKeown was running guns from Miami to Castro's forces, and then the narrative REALLY gets interesting. Here's how John wrote it up on p. 178 of Harvey and Lee:

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In 1957 McKeown returned to his native Texas and lived in Baytown, the small community adjacent to Kemah, Texas, where Jack Ruby collected and stored guns and ammunition for shipment to Mexico. It was in Houston, at the Shamrock Hotel, that McKeown first met Fidel Castro, with whom he began a long and close relationship.

McKeown soon began delivering large quantities of arms, munitions, and supplies to Mexico for delivery to Castro. He was paid with CIA cash bundled in Pan American Bank of Miami wrappers. Castro himself piloted his boat to Mexico, picked up the arms from McKeown, and returned to Cuba....

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The book goes on to describe a letter from Hoover to the Warren Commission describing the "conspiracy" of McKeown and others to send munitions to Castro. Other discussions about LEE Oswald and McKeown are scattered throughout the book in chronological order.

--Jim

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[Thomas Graves]

Another fascinating interview of GPH. Thanks for posting it, Greg!

You briefly mentioned Chauncey Holt in it.

Question: Did Hemming ever talk to you about Holt?

Thanks,

--Tommy

Edited July 19, 2014 by Thomas Graves

[Greg Burnham]

You're welcome, Tommy.

Yes, we talked about Holt, but not too much. They didn't know each other, but occasionally they would both mention the same obscure name of a third party.

[Thomas Graves]

You're welcome, Tommy.

Yes, we talked about Holt, but not too much. They didn't know each other, but occasionally they would both mention the same obscure name of a third party.

Greg,

I wonder if it's true that Hemming lured Oswald into bringing his rifle to work on 11/22/63 by offering to buy it...

--Tommy

[Paul Trejo]

Greg, this was another interesting interview of Gerry Patrick Hemming. Thanks for sharing it on the FORUM.

I was particularly impressed that Hemming named a figure that I've not heard about from any other JFK researcher except Harry Dean, namely, Guy Gabaldon.

Gerry Patrick Hemming evidently knew a lot about Guy Gabaldon, including the movie made about him (FROM HELL TO ETERNITY, 1960) starring Jeffrey Hunter, and the father of Gabaldon's wife, and the fact that Gabaldon had houses in Mexico as well as in Los Angeles.

Harry Dean says that Guy Gabaldon was present in the Los Angeles meeting with Ex-General Edwin Walker and Congressman John Rousselot in the Southern California John Birch Society post-meeting in mid-September 1963 in which the JFK murder and the name of Lee Harvey Oswald were mentioned.

Guy Gabaldon shares his opinions freely in his book, AMERICA BETRAYED (formerly Saipan: Suicide Island, 1962) which is largely a John Birch-like rant against Liberals, JFK, RFK and the United Nations. However, Gabaldon also lets loose with hate-speech against "Japs, homos, potheads and the Peace Corps. He was open, honest and slightly to the right of Attila the Hun.

Edwin Walker's personal papers include some correspondence with Gerry Patrick Hemming. Do you have Hemming's opinions about Ex-General Edwin Walker in your interview tapes, Greg?

Thanks,

--Paul Trejo

Edited July 24, 2014 by Paul Trejo

[Greg Burnham]

Yes, he thought Walker was a right-wing asshole nutcase.

[Paul Trejo]

Yes, he thought Walker was a right-wing asshole nutcase.

Thanks for the response, Greg.

I find Hemming's opinion of General Walker to be odd, particularly since Hemming himself was a right-wing activist.

I also found a 1963 letter from Gerry Patrick Hemming addressed to Ex-General Walker inside the boxes of Edwin Walker's personal papers, stored at the Briscoe Center for the Study of American History (UT Austin).

That letter from Gerry Patrick Hemming is very polite, and describes the poverty and desperation of Interpen members who had sacrificed so much in their family lives by volunteering to bring Fidel Castro down.

Hemming also admits that he, along with several members of Interpen, visited General Walker at his home, and sat drinking beer and smoking cigarettes on the back porch of Walker's home on 4011 Turtle Creek Blvd in Dallas. This was shortly after the infamous 10 April 1963 shooting at Walker (allegedly by Lee Harvey Oswald).

In those recollections, Hemming thought that Walker was acting too calm and assured for somebody who had only weeks beforehand escaped death so narrowly, behind the window of that very porch. (This is why Hemming thought Walker might have staged his own shooting.)

Yet Hemming might not have known Walker's full history -- when Walker was in the Army in the 1940's, and was assigned to parachute duty, having never worn a parachute before, he was up in the airplane, asked his subordinates how to put the parachute on, and then within seconds, to their amazement, he dove out of the airplane, head first.

That was the sort of personality that Walker had all his life. He liked to impress people, especially military people. Being surrounded by Interpen mercenaries on his back porch in late April or early May 1963, it does not surprise me that Walker would put on an act of supreme confidence -- even if the shooting had been real.

Regards,

--Paul Trejo

Edited July 25, 2014 by Paul Trejo

[Greg Burnham]

Paul,

You are again making statements that are untrue. Hemming was not "right-wing" nor was he an activist or a mercenary.

[Paul Trejo]

Paul,

You are again making statements that are untrue. Hemming was not "right-wing" nor was he an activist or a mercenary.

Greg, the mercenary status of Hemming's group, Interpen is well-known, is it not? They were engaged in toppling the left-wing government of Fidel Castro, were they not? The right-wing funded this activity, did they not?

Regards,

--Paul Trejo

[Greg Burnham]

Perhaps I should begin to refer to you as: A.J. Trejo? Or perhaps: Paul Weberman.

[Greg Burnham]

Paul,

You are again making statements that are untrue. Hemming was not "right-wing" nor was he an activist or a mercenary.

Greg, the mercenary status of Hemming's group, Interpen is well-known, is it not? They were engaged in toppling the left-wing government of Fidel Castro, were they not? The right-wing funded this activity, did they not?

Regards,

--Paul Trejo

Here's your answer -- straight from the horse's mouth.

[Paul Trejo]

Perhaps I should begin to refer to you as: A.J. Trejo? Or perhaps: Paul Weberman.

Greg, I have no illusions that Gerry Patrick Hemming never lied to A.J. Weberman, or that Weberman always got the truth from Gerry Patrick Hemming.

Yet I do recognize the tremendous volume of material that Hemming was willing to give to Weberman over the years. Also, when Hemming came to this very Education Forum back in 2005, I believe, he gave Weberman the credit for talking him into that.

So, there is a mixed bag with Weberman, but we have so much volume that we have years of data to sort out with his historical interviews of Gerry Patrick Hemming.

Perhaps the main difference I see between Weberman's interview style and your own is that Weberman interrupted Hemming much more frequently, and that sort of grated on Hemming.

Regards,

--Paul Trejo

[Paul Trejo]

Greg, the mercenary status of Hemming's group, Interpen is well-known, is it not? They were engaged in toppling the left-wing government of Fidel Castro, were they not? The right-wing funded this activity, did they not?

Regards,

--Paul Trejo

Here's your answer -- straight from the horse's mouth.

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Greg, actually, that's an excellent interview.

Of course it clarifies that it all depends upon how we define "right-winger" in any given context. Gerry Patrick Hemming wasn't a member of the American Nazi Party under George LIncoln Rockwell, and he never joined the John Birch Society -- although he did ask them for money from time to time, and was disappointed that he only got a few bucks here and there.

Yet one man's right-winger is another man's conservative, and vice versa.

I suppose all we might agree upon is that Gerry Patrick Hemming and Interpen were Anti-Communists of the militant variety. Some people call that right-winger, and other people call that common sense conservatism. Hemming evidently thought the latter.

Regards,

--Paul Trejo

Edited July 27, 2014 by Paul Trejo