Jump to content
The Education Forum

Russ Baker: Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty


John Simkin

Recommended Posts

I have been very busy with several projects that all have deadlines and have only managed to find time to read about 20% of the book. However, it is enough to realize that this is a very important book. Russ covers the careers of several characters based in Texas who have not really been covered in any detail by previous researchers. It therefore raises a lot of important questions and opens up new areas of research. It is also is incredibly well written that manages to be both readable and academic.

I have a lot of specific questions for Russ but will start with a couple general questions:

1. Do you plan to send a copy of your book to Barack Obama?

2. Which classified documents concerning the Bush family and their associates would you urge the new president to release?

John, I hadn't planned to send President Obama a book. I figure he's pretty busy right now. However, Family of Secrets was reviewed on Page 3 of Washington Post Book World, and it is in pretty much every bookstore in DC. I would hope someone might slip him a copy.

On classified documents, I would urge President Obama to seriously question the entire system of classifying documents, and consider declassifying the vast bulk of historical documents of all kinds, including those relating to the Bush family. The most savvy insiders I know consider the classification system to be more about protecting certain people than the longterm interests of the country. I do support classifying documents that contain current or recent information of genuine sensitivity, especially concerning technologies, sources and methods. But that covers a very small percentage of the total paperwork, and with anything that is more than a few years old, I think the burden of proof should be on the person who wants to withhold the information to make their case before a tough judge. Regarding the Bushes, I do wonder if there are not more documents out there that would shed light on Prescott Bush's precise activiites in overseeing sensitive covert operations as a senator, and on George HW Bush's activities in the 1950s and 60s as addressed in Family of Secrets.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 74
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Guest Tom Scully
John, I hadn't planned to send President Obama a book. I figure he's pretty busy right now. However, Family of Secrets was reviewed on Page 3 of Washington Post Book World, and it is in pretty much every bookstore in DC. I would hope someone might slip him a copy.

On classified documents, I would urge President Obama to seriously question the entire system of classifying documents, and consider declassifying the vast bulk of historical documents of all kinds, including those relating to the Bush family. The most savvy insiders I know consider the classification system to be more about protecting certain people than the longterm interests of the country. I do support classifying documents that contain current or recent information of genuine sensitivity, especially concerning technologies, sources and methods. But that covers a very small percentage of the total paperwork, and with anything that is more than a few years old, I think the burden of proof should be on the person who wants to withhold the information to make their case before a tough judge. Regarding the Bushes, I do wonder if there are not more documents out there that would shed light on Prescott Bush's precise activiites in overseeing sensitive covert operations as a senator, and on George HW Bush's activities in the 1950s and 60s as addressed in Family of Secrets.

Russ,

I hope your book tour and book sales are going well, and I would be pleased to talk to you about Conrad Hilton when your schedule permits it.

As far as Obama changing anything like you describe, IMO, don't hold your breath, waiting for it.....

I see an even more basic problem concerning our "right to know", and how it relates to accountability than the important question of how and what to declassify and to classify.

Up until yesterday, we had a neat repository available online, that in and of itself was a rich, central, quickly retrievable record to support, for any reasonable person familiar with the Robert Jackson's Nuremberg definition of the crime against humanity of waging "agressive war", the rapid convening of a war crimes investigation:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&saf...amp;btnG=Search

Press Conference by the President

President George W. Bush gestures as he thanks the White House media for its ...... to kill innocent life, who would -- who had relations with Zarqawi. ...

www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/08/20060821.html

Q Quick follow-up. A lot of the consequences you mentioned for pulling out seem like maybe they never would have been there if we hadn't gone in. How do you square all of that?

THE PRESIDENT: I square it because, imagine a world in which you had Saddam Hussein who had the capacity to make a weapon of mass destruction, who was paying suiciders to kill innocent life, who would -- who had relations with Zarqawi. Imagine what the world would be like with him in power.

Just 25 days later.....:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&saf...amp;btnG=Search

Press Conference of the President

Martha. Q Mr. President, you have said throughout the war in Iraq and building up to the war in Iraq ... I never said there was an operational relationship. ...

www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/09/20060915-2.html

Press Briefing by Tony Snow

SNOW: The President has never said that there was a direct, operational relationship between the two, and this is important. Zarqawi was in Iraq. ...

www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/09/20060912-2.html

Interview of the Vice President by Tim Russert, NBC News, Meet the ...

Q The committee said that there was no relationship. In fact, Saddam -- ... THE VICE PRESIDENT: -- but the fact is, we know that Zarqawi, running a ...

www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/09/20060910.html

The Rest of the Story: Iraq's Links to Al Qaeda

QUESTION: "Mr. President, do you believe that Saddam Hussein is a bigger ... I know that part of this - and part of this Zarqawi network in Baghdad are two ...

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/20...20060915-4.html

"The Full Context Of The President's Quote Shows That He Was NOT Drawing An Operational Link Between Al Qaeda And Saddam But Was Making The Point That Both Posed Threats To The World."

http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=130169

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=130169&page=1

Bush Calls Off Attack on Poison Gas Lab

Calls Off Operation to Take Out Al Qaeda-Sponsored Poison Gas Lab

By John McWethy

W A S H I N G T O N, Aug. 20 (2002)

President Bush called off a planned covert raid into northern Iraq late last week that was aimed at a small group of al Qaeda operatives who U.S. intelligence officials believed were experimenting with poison gas and deadly toxins, according to administration officials....

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/20...20021007-8.html

President Bush October 7, 2002

...We know that Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy -- the United States of America. We know that Iraq and al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade. Some al Qaeda leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq. These include one very senior al Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year, and who has been associated with planning for chemical and biological attacks. We've learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases. And we know that after September the 11th, Saddam Hussein's regime gleefully celebrated the terrorist attacks on America....

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/20...20030205-1.html

For Immediate Release

February 5, 2003

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell Addresses the U.N. Security Council

.. But what I want to bring to your attention today is the potentially much more sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al Qaida terrorist network, a nexus that combines classic terrorist organizations and modern methods of murder. Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, an associated in collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaida lieutenants.

Zarqawi, a Palestinian born in Jordan, fought in the Afghan war more than a decade ago. Returning to Afghanistan in 2000, he oversaw a terrorist training camp. One of his specialities and one of the specialties of this camp is poisons. When our coalition ousted the Taliban, the Zarqaqi network helped establish another poison and explosive training center camp. And this camp is located in northeastern Iraq.

Colin Powell slide 39

Slide 39

POWELL: You see a picture of this camp. ....

... Zarqawi's activities are not confined to this small corner of north east Iraq. He traveled to Baghdad in May 2002 for medical treatment, staying in the capital of Iraq for two months while he recuperated to fight another day.

During this stay, nearly two dozen extremists converged on Baghdad and established a base of operations there. These Al Qaida affiliates, based in Baghdad, now coordinate the movement of people, money and supplies into and throughout Iraq for his network, and they've now been operating freely in the capital for more than eight months...

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/20...0030206-17.html

President Bush February 6, 2003

...Iraq has sent bomb-making and document forgery experts to work with al Qaeda. Iraq has also provided al Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training.

We also know that Iraq is harboring a terrorist network, headed by a senior al Qaeda terrorist planner. The network runs a poison and explosive training center in northeast Iraq, and many of its leaders are known to be in Baghdad. The head of this network traveled to Baghdad for medical treatment and stayed for months. Nearly two dozen associates joined him there and have been operating in Baghdad for more than eight months.

The same terrorist network operating out of Iraq is responsible for the murder, the recent murder, of an American citizen, an American diplomat, Laurence Foley. The same network has plotted terrorism against France, Spain, Italy, Germany, the Republic of Georgia, and Russia, and was caught producing poisons in London...

http://web.archive.org/web/20030401230416/...d=3&pid=371

Capital Games By David Corn

Powell's One Good Reason To Bomb Iraq--UPDATED

02/06/2003 @ 12:12am

...But here's the first question that struck me after Powell's presentation:

why hasn't the United States bombed the so-called Zarqawi camp shown in the slide? The administration obviously knows where it is, and Powell spoke of it in the present tense.

http://articles.latimes.com/2003/feb/07/world/fg-intel7

The Los Angeles Times, The, Feb 7, 2003 by GREG MILLER

Ongoing Iraqi Camp Questioned

Why not hit terrorist camp?

Lawmakers question lack of military action

By GREG MILLER Los Angeles Times

Friday, February 7, 2003

Washington -- Secretary of State Colin L. Powell spent a significant part of his presentation to the United Nations this week describing a terrorist camp in northern Iraq where al-Qaida affiliates are said to be training to carry out attacks with explosives and poisons.

"Why have we not taken it out?" Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) asked Powell during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing. "Why have we let it sit there if it's such a dangerous plant producing these toxins?"

Powell declined to answer, saying he could not discuss the matter in open session.

"I can assure you that it is a place that has been very much in our minds. And we have been tracing individuals who have gone in there and come out of there," Powell said.

Absent an explanation from the White House, some officials suggested the administration had refrained from striking the compound in part to preserve a key piece of its case against Iraq.

"This is it, this is their compelling evidence for use of force," said one intelligence official, who asked not to be identified.

But neither Powell nor other administration officials answered the question: What is the United States doing about it?...

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/20...2/20030208.html

President Bush March 6, 2003

Discusses Iraq in National Press Conference

,,THE PRESIDENT: ,.Colin Powell, in an eloquent address to the United Nations, described some of the information we were at liberty of talking about. He mentioned a man named Al Zarqawi, who was in charge of the poison network. He's a man who was wounded in Afghanistan, received aid in Baghdad, ordered the killing of a U.S. citizen, USAID employee, was harbored in Iraq. There is a poison plant in Northeast Iraq. To assume that Saddam Hussein knew none of this was going on is not to really understand the nature of the Iraqi society...

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/20...20040617-3.html

June 17, 2004

... THE PRESIDENT: The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda, because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. This administration never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and al Qaeda. We did say there were numerous contacts between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. For example, Iraqi intelligence officers met with bin Laden, the head of al Qaeda, in the Sudan. There's numerous contacts between the two.

I always said that Saddam Hussein was a threat. He was a threat because he had used weapons of mass destruction against his own people. He was a threat because he was a sworn enemy to the United States of America, just like al Qaeda. He was a threat because he had terrorist connections -- not only al Qaeda connections, but other connections to terrorist organizations; Abu Nidal was one. He was a threat because he provided safe-haven for a terrorist like Zarqawi, who is still killing innocent inside of Iraq.

No, he was a threat, and the world is better off and America is more secure without Saddam Hussein in power. ..

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/20...20040618-1.html

June 18, 2004

President Bush Salutes Soldiers in Fort Lewis, Washington

Remarks by the President to the Military Personnel

Fort Lewis, Washington

..And we're beginning to see results of people stepping up to defend themselves. Iraqi police and Civil Defense Corps have captured several wanted terrorists, including Umar Boziani. He was a key lieutenant of this killer named Zarqawi who's ordering the suiciders inside of Iraq. By the way,

''he was the fellow who was in Baghdad at times prior to our arrival. He was operating out of Iraq. He was an Al Qaeda associate.

See, he was there before we came. He's there after we came. And we'll find him.''..

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/20...20040923-8.html

September 23, 2004

President Bush and Prime Minister Allawi Press Conference

...PRESIDENT BUSH: Imagine a world in which Saddam Hussein were still in power. This is a man who harbored terrorists -- Abu Abbas, Abu Nidal, Zarqawi...

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/20...20060320-7.html

March 20, 2006

THE PRESIDENT:..We also did say that Zarqawi, the man who is now wreaking havoc and killing innocent life, was in Iraq. .....but I was very careful never to say that Saddam Hussein ordered the attacks on America....

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/20...9/20060910.html

September 10, 2006

..Q Then why in the lead-up to the war was there the constant linkage between Iraq and al Qaeda?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: That's a different issue. Now, there's a question of whether or not al Qaeda -- whether or not Iraq was involved in 9/11; separate and apart from that is the issue of whether or not there was a historic relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. The basis for that is probably best captured in George Tenet's testimony before the Senate intel committee in open session, where he said specifically that there was a pattern, a relationship that went back at least a decade between Iraq and al Qaeda....

..we know that Zarqawi, running a terrorist camp in Afghanistan prior to 9/11, after we went into 9/11 -- then fled and went to Baghdad and set up operations in Baghdad in the spring of '02..

.Zarqawi was in Baghdad after we took Afghanistan and before we went into Iraq. You had the facility up at Kermal, a poisons facility run by an Ansar al-Islam, an affiliate of al Qaeda..

Cheney Oct. 19, 2006 http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/20...0061019-10.html

Q Are you saying that you believe fighting in Iraq has prevented terrorist attacks on American soil? And if so, why, since there has not been a direct connection between al Qaeda and Iraq established?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, the fact of the matter is there are connections. Mr. Zarqawi, who was the lead terrorist in Iraq for three years, fled there after we went into Afghanistan. He was there before we ever went into Iraq. The sectarian violence that we see now, in part, has been stimulated by the fact of al Qaeda attacks intended to try to create conflict between Shia and Sunni...

Cheney April 5, 2007 http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/20...20070405-3.html

Q It may not just be Iraq. Yesterday I read that Ike Skelton, who chairs -- I forget the name of the committee -- in the next defense appropriations bill for fiscal '08 is going to actually remove the phrase "global war on terror," because they don't think it's applicable. They want to refer to conflicts as individual skirmishes. But they're going to try to rid the defense appropriation bill -- and, thus, official government language -- of that term. Does that give you any indication of their motivation or what they think of the current plight in which the country finds itself?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Sure -- well, it's just flawed thinking. I like Ike Skelton; I worked closely with Ike when I was Secretary of Defense. He's Chairman of the Armed Services Committee now. Ike is a good man. He's just dead wrong about this, though. Think about -- just to give you one example, Rush, remember Abu Musab al Zarqawi, a Jordanian terrorist, al Qaeda affiliate; ran a training camp in Afghanistan for al Qaeda, then migrated -- after we went into Afghanistan and shut him down there, he went to Baghdad, took up residence there before we ever launched into Iraq; organized the al Qaeda operations inside Iraq before we even arrived on the scene, and then, of course, led the charge for Iraq until we killed him last June. He's the guy who arranged the bombing of the Samarra Mosque that precipitated the sectarian violence between Shia and Sunni. This is al Qaeda operating in Iraq. And as I say, they were present before we invaded Iraq. ..

Cheney June 3, 2007 http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/20...6/20070603.html

The Vice President:..The worst terrorist we had in Iraq was a guy named Abu Musab al Zarqawi, a Jordanian by birth; served time in a Jordanian prison as a terrorist, was let out on amnesty. Then he went to Afghanistan and ran one of those training camps back in the late '90s that trained terrorists. Then when we launched into Afghanistan after 9/11, he was wounded, and fled to Baghdad for medical treatment, and then set up shop in Iraq. So he operated in Jordan, he operated in Afghanistan, then he moved to Iraq..

As of today, the links and content displayed above are only available at the google search results 'cache" links.

As of today the whitehouse.gov links above now resolve to display only this:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/20...8/20060821.html

Page Not Found

The page you requested wasn't found at this location. The Obama Administration has created a brand new White House website, and it's possible that the page you were looking for has been moved.

Please take a moment to explore our new site, learn more about President Obama and his team, and read about their plan to bring about the change America needs.

You can even read the blog, hear all the latest news and current events, and share your thoughts and feedback with the President.

We'll be adding new content and features every day, so we hope you'll bookmark WhiteHouse.gov and visit often. In the meantime, you can use the search field below to find more information on President Obama and the Administration.

Observe, in real time, the alleged, political opposition of the Bush regime, at the least, facilitating the obliteration a repository of compelling evidence of crimes against humanity, gross violation of US obligations to international treaty terms and duty to investigate and prosecute, in the instant and willful destruction of the whitehouse.gov website, as it existed up until yesterday.

Obama had a duty, as incoming chief law enforcement officer, to publicly demand that the whitehouse.gov website and it's contents, paid for and owned by US taxpayers, be left intact, and up and running, by the outgoing administration. I've heard nothing to the effect from Obama or his team, have you?

A credible incoming opposition party head of state with a real commitment to human rights and the rule of law would have preserved the whitehouse.gov site, as it was, for the public to access and investigators to examine for evidence of lawbreaking:

The effects of Obama's refusal to investigate Bush crimes - Glenn Greenwald...

Jan 20, 2009 ... Jonathan Turley: There are war crimes. .... A treaty signed in 1988 by Ronald Reagan compels the U.S. to ... Glenn Greenwald drawing ...

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/200...rley/index.html

Sunday Jan. 18, 2009 06:50 EST

Binding U.S. law requires prosecutions for those who authorize torture

It seems fairly easy -- even for those overtly hostile to the basic rules of logic and law -- to see what conclusions are compelled by these clear premises:

Associated Press, April 11, 2008:

Bush administration officials from Vice President Dick Cheney on down signed off on using harsh interrogation techniques against suspected terrorists after asking the Justice Department to endorse their legality, The Associated Press has learned.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/200...ions/index.html

Edited by Tom Scully
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On classified documents, I would urge President Obama to seriously question the entire system of classifying documents, and consider declassifying the vast bulk of historical documents of all kinds, including those relating to the Bush family. The most savvy insiders I know consider the classification system to be more about protecting certain people than the longterm interests of the country. I do support classifying documents that contain current or recent information of genuine sensitivity, especially concerning technologies, sources and methods.

It looks like there is some new directions on FOIA and Classified docs with the Obama Admin:

Obama Issues Executive Order on FOIA and Secrecy : The Washington Independent

Although it’s not yet available on the White House Website, President Obama has reportedly issued an order aimed at reversing the secrecy policies of the Bush administration.

Former Bush administration Attorney General John Ashcroft encouraged information officers to vigorously search all the Freedom of Information Act exemptions before releasing anything, which yielded all sorts of excuses for not releasing documents. President Obama today issued a memo instructing “all members of his administration to operate under principles of openness, transparency and of engaging citizens with their government,” according to a White House press release.

But I have not seen the actual Exec Order yet on http://www.whitehouse.gov

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On pages 263-274 you consider the case of Willem Oltmans and the evidence that he supplied to the House Select Committee on Assassinations on 4th January 1977. You make the comment that: “His profile at times appears less that of the typical left-leaning Dutch journalist and more suggestive of a U.S. intelligence agent. Former colleagues of Oltmans, who is deceased, described him to me as a complex and mysterious figure. As will become clear, Oltmans was a cipher to one and all, sometimes seeming to be determined to expose the truth, and sometimes to do the opposite. Perhaps he was something of a free agent, pursuing a particular course yet unhappy about it. But one thing is certain: just as de Mohrenschildt helped steer Oswald, to a lesser extent Oltmans did the same for de Mohrenschildt.”

I have carried out some research into Oltman's career and would argue that his reporting of events in Indonesia, Cuba and North Vietnam suggest he reflected a consistent left-wing position.

In 2000 Oltmans won his legal case against the Dutch government. The jury agreed that the government conspired to keep him out of work, for which it had to pay him 8 million guilders in damages. This dates back to reports that he was writing about Netherlands New Guinea in 1956. This upset Joseph Luns, the Dutch minister of foreign affairs. The court ruled that Oltmans was right when he claimed that Luns did what he could to sabotage his journalistic career. Luns was a close friend of the CIA and eventually was appointed Secretary General of NATO.

We also know that during this period the CIA was working with Luns in an attempt to overthrow President Sukarno of Indonesia. The head of this CIA operation was Al Ulmer, who ran the agency's Far East operations. In fact, Ulmer lost his job after the failure of the CIA backed coup in May 1958. As Thomas Powers, the author of The Man Who Kept The Secrets (1979), a book about Richard Helms, points out: "The result, of course, was a humiliation for the United States, but it was a quiet humiliation. The Indonesians knew who had been behind the rebels, of course, but they elected to treat the matter calmly... and the American press somehow never got wind of the CIA's role."

Oltmans, who enjoyed a good relationship with Sukarno, did know what was going on and reported this in the Dutch press. This does not sound like someone under the control of the CIA. In fact, by 1962, this journalist who was reporting on events in Cuba and North Vietnam in the early 1960s, was seen as a hero by left-wing students. It is during this period that his network was infiltrated by CIA agent Werner Verrips.

Oltmans also claims that he was supplying President Kennedy with information about the situation in New Guinea. Whatever the truth of this statement, Kennedy, against CIA advice, applied pressure on the Dutch government to hand over the territory to a temporary UN administration (UNTEA). On May 1, 1963, Indonesia took control of the country. It was not only over the policy towards Cuba that the CIA was angry with Kennedy.

Without the testimony of Oltmans I don’t think the story about George de Mohrenschildt claims about the assassination would have entered the public domain. Nor would much attention have been paid to his suicide three months after Oltmans’ testimony to the HSCA.

What is significant is that at the time of his death he was taking part in a planned four-day interview at the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach with Edward Jay Epstein on behalf of the Reader's Digest magazine. In my view, this was an attempt by the CIA to discover just how much de Mohrenschildt knew about the assassination. We now know that de Mohrenschildt had given an interview to Dick Russell in June 1976. See this thread for Dick’s comments on this:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.ph...13575&st=60

I know I would trust the evidence of Willem Oltmans and Dick Russell over that of Edward Jay Epstein.

What is your view of the de Mohrenschildt’s confession he made to Oltmans?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest Tom Scully

I don't see where the concern for Obama or even "the hope for change", is coming from, especially from admirable researchers and writers like Russ Baker and other members of this forum. The history is of complicity, no rivalry, by the presidents and elected congressional members of the two major political parties. The backgrounds of the two Chicago "billionaire" families supporting Obama, and this "news", relay this sad truth:

The history is that nobody gets elected US president in modern times who is not committed to serving their elite masters. The changes we hope for will only come by a new political order achieved as a consequence, at best, of an angry, populist backlash. I am not going to hold my breath. The majority of actual voters elected GHW Bush...or his son, to the office of US president or VP, for five, four year terms since 1980.

http://www.google.com/search?q=israeli%20r...sa=N&tab=nw

Obama's first pick: Israeli Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff ...

Nov 6, 2008 ... "Obama's first pick: Israeli Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff -News and commentary relating to events in Israel, the occupied territories, ..."

The history is that not only Clinton did not "buck the system", but neither did other democratic party US presidents, Carter, LBJ, Harry Truman, or for the most part, JFK and FDR. FDR had McCloy and Brown Bros. Harriman/Union Pacific RR partner and Jupiter Island resident, Robert A. Lovett, on his defense "team", along with Lovett best friend and fellow Skull and Bonesman, Trubee Davison. Under Truman, Lovett chaired the committee that created the CIA, installed Trubee there as personnel director, and then was appointed as Sec'ty of DOD by Truman to direct the Korean War.

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/...,954081,00.html

"........Washington's war secretary Henry Stimson said he did not want "the United States to get the reputation of outdoing Hitler

in atrocities". His less diplomatic deputy, Robert Lovett, pleading the case for adopting anti-personnel bombs loaded with napalm and white phosphorous, said: "If we are going to have a total war, we might as well make it as horrible as possible."...

Truman had to know about the results of Asst. US Atty Gen., O. John Rogge's 1946 interrogations of Goering and Ribbentrop at Nuremberg....

JFK's relationship with Lovett and cronies began no differently:

The Rich & the Super Rich: A Study in the Power of Money Today - Page 173

by Ferdinand Lundberg, Peter Wilsher - Capitalists and financiers - 1968 - 504 pages

Kennedy, even with no war providing an excuse for a coalition, awarded his chief Cabinet posts to Republicans from the camp of big wealth. ...

When Sargent Shriver, Kennedy's chief headhunter (and brother-in-law..) called Lovett about the Pentagon job, he again recommended McNamara as "the best of the lot." Lovett's voice counted heavily with Kennedy;

Gilpatric joined the new Kennedy administration in 1961 as part of the wave of Kennedy appointments. His appointment was unusual: he was one of the few Pentagon leaders handpicked by the new President. Fearing that Robert McNamara was inexperienced in Washington's ways, Kennedy chose Gilpatric to add experience to his Defense team...

(The book says the White House learned early on that W. Mark Felt, an F.B.I. official who had wanted the job that Mr. Gray got, was a news leaker. Attorney General Richard G. Kleindienst advised him in 1972 to fire Mr. Felt, Mr. Gray wrote.)

"Where’s all this coming from?" Mr. Gray asked.

"From John Mitchell," Mr. Kleindienst replied, referring to the former attorney general who was heading the Nixon’s re-election campaign.

But who was Mr. Mitchell’s source? "It’s Roswell Gilpatric," Mr. Kleindienst said.

I recently posted links strongly supporting that the most recent democratic governor of the most populous US state, Gray Davis, was born into a family made prosperous by the profits of his late grandfather, American Nazi abwehr agent "C-80". William Rhodes Davis, documented in extensive detail below, who left an estate to Gray Davis' grandmother, father, and uncle, in 1941 of "between $5 and $10 million", derived from financing of the Reichsbank, on Hitler's personal approval, of a proposal to build and operate the Eurotank oil refinery in Hamburg, Germany, completed in 1938, and supplied with expropriated Mexican crude oil, run through a British blockade in Davis' tankers....

http://news.google.com/archivesearch?hl=en...range=1990,2009

2 DAVIS OIL CARGOES CAPTURED BY BRITISH; $250,000 Shipments of...

- New York Times - Oct 27, 1939

"... that two tankers carrying Mexican oil had been captured by the British. ... the oil had been shipped from Mexico in Norwegian tankers by W. R. Davis, ... "

Summing up what is documented below is that William Rhodes Davis, at the direction of Goering and Ribbentrop, with funds provided by the German Embassy in DC, was flown by Samuel F. Pryor's son, Sam Pryor Jr., Wendell Willkie's, 1940 eastern states campaign manager, first cousin of Joseph V. Reed Jr., was flown to Indiana in Pryor Jr.'s private plane to be introduced to and meet with Willkie, to discuss an offer of significant Nazi financing of Willkie's presidential campaign. The discussion is reported to have included specifics like:

Never Again; a President Runs for a Third Term‎ - Page 233

by Herbert S. Parmet, Marie B. Hecht - Presidents - 1968 - 306 pages

"Willkie, who had never heard of Davis and asked no questions about his ... The

Hatch Act could be circumvented by having the money distributed among Davis' .."

Obama's early and key backers are the the multi billionaire son and grandson of Henry Crown, the man who in 1963, gained the most financially from the shift in political power and legislative investigative focus resulting from the abrupt ending of the JFK administration and the beginning of LBJ's presidential tenure.

Obama's other principle backers are the equally wealthy Pritzker family of Chicago:

The Last Mogul: Lew Wasserman, MCA, and the Hidden History of ... - Google Books Result

by Dennis McDougal - 2001 - Biography & Autobiography - 600 pages

Whenever he might be in doubt, SAG President Ronald Reagan now had both Lew Wasserman and Sid Korshak to turn to. At the beginning of the strike, ...

http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=fiv...;hl=en&um=1

The Contrasting Lives Of Sidney R. Korshak; Successful California...

- New York Times - Jun 27, 1976

... consensus that Mr. Korshak was one of the five most powerful members of the ... Others, who do acknowledge something about his underworld connections, ...

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=...bNkccl6f1Ui1A6Q

Prosecutors Find Lawyer A Tough Target .

St. Petersburg Times - Google News Archive - Jun 30, 1976

... large that the agents found it impossible to determine whether Korshak was living beyond his means one ... Hut there are four or five guys who are equally.

Sinatra Wed in Palm Springs; Reagan, Agnew Among Guests

$3.95 - New York Times - Jul 12, 1976

Ronald Reagan, the Republican Presidential candidate, interrupted his campaigning to come ... Mrs. Marx selected as her matron of honor Mrs. Sidney Korshak, ...

5 Papers Refuse to Print Some Doonesbury Strips

Special to The New York Times

July 13, 1979, Friday

LOS ANGELES, July 12--At least five newspapers have refused to print installments of the "Doonesbury" comic strip because of what editors are calling "libelous" references to Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. and Sidney R. Korshak, a Beverly Hills lawyer.

http://books.google.com/books?id=WrgC6N_oS...3+years+korshak

The Nick Tosches Reader By Nick Tosches

Korshak was "a man who was more investigated by more authorities than any person I ever heard of: the FBI, the Secret Service, the local police in various communities. Never once was he ever indicted or charged with anything."

"....Korshak was "a very dear friend" who would "do anything in the world for you." But Kupcinet conceded there was also a dark side." He could be very tough on some members of the Mob who would get in his way and interfere with him. He knew he had the backing of (Chicago crime boss) Tony Accardo.Tony Accardo loved him: he depended on him." Korshak, Kupcinet said, "was considered to be a fair haired boy in the organization with the blessings of Tony Accardo."

According to an FBI informant, it was also through Korshak and Jake Arvey that Accardo and Gus Alex, by 1961, were able to acquire large blocks of stock in the Hilton hotel chain.

Korshak was involved not only with Hilton but also with the Hyatt chain, having arranged a Teamster loan for Hyatt. He was close to the Pritzker family, who owned Hyatt, and to the Hiltons as well. Today, Korshak's son Harry is married to the sister of Trish Hilton, the widow of Nicky Hilton...."

Earl Warren placed Henry Crown's personal attorney on the Warren Commission, assigned to determine if Oswald was part of a conspiracy. The result was that no conspiracy was found, and Crown's attorney, Albert Jenner, as Russ noted in his book, did things like obscure an earnest questioning of Oswald's "best friend", George de Mohrenschildt, who also happened to be a friend of Jackie Kennedy's mother, and the "uncle" of George HW Bush's Phiillips Andover roommate, and possibly best friend, Edward Hooker, as in this example Russ provided:

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/demohr_g.htm

...Mr. JENNER. Who is Mrs. Bouvier?

Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. Mrs. Bouvier is Jacqueline Kennedy's mother, also her father and her whole family. She was in the process of getting a divorce from her husband. I met him, also. We were very close friends. We saw each other every day. I met Jackie then, when she was a little girl. Her sister, who was still in the cradle practically. We were also very close friends of Jack Bouvier's sister, and his father.

Mr. JENNER. Well, bring yourself along.

Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. That friendship more or less remained, because we still see each other, occasionally--Mrs. Auchincloss, and occasionally correspond.

Well, then, I realized there was no future selling perfume or materials in the State, and having had that background of the oil industry in my blood, because my father was the director of Nobel Enterprises, which is a large oil concern in Russia, which was eventally expropriated and confiscated, and I decided to come and try to work for an oil company. I arrived in Texas.

Mr. JENNER. Excuse me, sir. Before we get there because that skips some things--one of your efforts was as an insurance salesman?

Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes; that is right.

Mr. JENNER. And----

Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. How did you know that?

Mr. JENNER. You were unsuccessful in that, were you? .....

TO THIS....JUST TEN QUESTIONS LATER:

....Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. Physical work, yes; lifting pipes, cleaning machinery.

Mr. JENNER. In other words, starting from the ground floor?

Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes.

Mr. JENNER. If there is such a thing in the oil business.

Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. Absolutely.

Mr. JENNER. Whatever the bottom was, you were doing it?

Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes, sir. Very well paid, by the way--a very well paid job, but very tough--at the time, you see, what good pay was at the time.

Mr. JENNER. I think we might at this time see if I can describe you for the record.

You are 6'1", are you not?

Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes.

Mr. JENNER. And now you weigh, I would say, about 195?

Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. That is right.

Mr. JENNER. Back in those days you weighed around 180.

Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. That is right.

Mr. JENNER. You are athletically inclined?

Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. That is right.

Mr. JENNER. And you have dark hair.

Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. No gray hairs yet.

Mr. JENNER. And you have a tanned--you are quite tanned, are you not?

Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes, sir.

Mr. JENNER. And you are an outdoorsman?

Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes. I have to tell you--I never expected you to ask me such questions. I also tried to get various jobs otherwise. I went to Arizona.

Mr. JENNER. Mr. De Mohrenschildt; one of the things I am trying to do is get your personality into the record, because many people have described your personality.

Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. Very different, probably.

Mr. JENNER. I wouldn't say very different. But you would be surprised the kind of things that are said about you. I don't know that you would be surprised.

Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. I know that I have friends, I have enemies.

Mr. JENNER. Well, everybody has. .....

Here are Carter's own powerful fellow political party members wrecking the incoming president's plan to reform the CIA, post DCI GHW Bush:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/...,918619,00.html

CARTER TAKES HIS LUMPS

Monday, Jan. 31, 1977

.....At stake was the confirmation of Jimmy Carter's nominee as CIA director: Theodore Sorensen, 48. Ready to bear witness against him were representatives of assorted conservative and right-wing groups, including the Liberty Lobby and the John Birch Society. Prepared to defend him were some of the ornaments of the Eastern liberal Establishment such as Averell Harriman and Clark Clifford. .....

....The withdrawal was a rebuke not only to Sorensen but to Carter. Only eight presidential Cabinet appointees have been rejected by the Senate in U.S. history. It is even rarer for a nominee to be turned down by a Congress controlled by the President's own party. The last time that happened was in 1925, ....

....But not everybody is nominated to be CIA director. "The effect [of Sorensen's appointment] on the clandestine services would have been serious," said a committee member. "His actions with the classified material and his support of Ellsberg would have raised doubts with sources around the world about the reliability of the director."....

....As the dust settled, it became apparent that Mondale had not been as alert to the hazards of the nomination as he might have been.

Though he had served on the Intelligence Committee when he was a Senator, he failed to consult its members beforehand on Sorensen; he also did not check their reaction until the appointment was just about doomed. But if Carter was disappointed with the performance of his Vice President, he was not saying so.

Many Senators were worried that the rebuff to Sorensen would provoke a display of Carter's stubborn streak. It did not—at least, not yet—even though it left him in something of a predicament. He must find a replacement for Sorensen who is acceptable to Capitol Hill, though the Senate is not likely to turn him down a second time. The Intelligence Committee has anticipated him by offering some suggestions, including former Commerce Secretary Pete Peterson and James Schlesinger. House Speaker Tip O'Neill proposed retired Army Lieut. General James Gavin, chairman of Arthur D. Little Inc., an industrial research firm in Cambridge, Mass. ...

An Admiral for Superspook?

Feb. 14, 1977

...become President Carter's...Academy classmate Admiral Stansfield Turner, 53, commander...director, Theodore Sorensen, suddenly withdrew...

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=8635

I plan to argue over the next few days that the same people who organized the assassination and cover-up of the death of JFK, were also responsible for the removal of Jimmy Carter from office.

John McCloy developed a close relationship with Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (Shah of Iran), who gained power in Iran during the Second World War. McCloy's legal firm, Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy, provided legal counsel to Pahlavi. The Chase International Investment Corporation, which McCloy established in the 1950s, had several joint ventures in Iran.

McCloy was also chairman of the Chase Manhattan Bank. Pahlavi had a personal account with the bank. So also did his private family trust, the Pahlavi Foundation. Kai Bird (The Chairman: John J. McCloy: The Making of the American Establishment) has argued: "Each year, the bank handled some $2 billion in Iranian Eurodollar transactions, and throughout the 1970s Iran had at least $6 billion on deposit at various branches around the world." As one financial commentator pointed out: "Iran became the crown jewel of Chase's international banking portfolio."

In January 1978, mass demonstrations took place in Iran. McCloy became concerned that Mohammad Reza Pahlavi would be overthrown. This was a major problem as outstanding loans to the regime amounted to over $500 million. McCloy went to see Robert Bowie, deputy director of the CIA. Bowie, who had just returned from Iran, was convinced that the communist Tudeh Party was behind the protests and were guilty of manipulating the Fedayeen and Mujahadeen. Over the next few months, McCloy organized a campaign to persuade President Jimmy Carter to protect the regime. This included David Rockefeller, Nelson Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger making deputations to the administration.

Despite the fact that Iranian troops had killed over 10,000 demonstrators during the disturbances, on 12th December, 1978, President Carter issued a statement saying: "I fully expect the Shah to maintain power in Iran... I think the predictions of doom and disaster that come from some sources have certainly not been realized at all. The Shah has our support and he also has our confidence."

The following month Mohammad Reza Pahlavi fled the country and on 1st February, 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile to form a new government.

McCloy asked President Jimmy Carter to allow the Shah to live in the United States. Carter refused because he had told by his diplomats in Iran that such a decision might encourage the embassy being stormed by mobs. As a result McCloy made preparations for the Shah to stay in the Bahamas. David Rockefeller arranged for his personal assistant at Chase Manhattan, Joseph V. Reed, to manage the Shah's finances.

Rockefeller also established the highly secret, Project Alpha. The main objective was to persuade Carter to provide a safe haven for Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (code-named "Eagle"). McCloy, Rockefeller and Kissinger were referred to as the "Triumvirate". Rockefeller used money from Chase Manhattan Bank to pay employees of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy who worked on the project. Some of this money was used to persuade academics to write articles defending the record of Pahlavi. For example, George Lenczowski, professor emeritus at the University of California, was paid $40,000 to write a book with the "intention to answer the shah's critics".

Kissinger telephoned Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor to Carter, on 7th April, 1979, and berated the president for his emphasis on human rights, which he considered to be "amateurish" and "naive". Brzezinski suggested he talked directly to Carter. Kissinger called Carter and arranged for him to meet David Rockefeller, two days later. Gerald Ford also contacted Carter and urged him to "stand by our friends".

McCloy, Rockefeller and Kissinger arranged for conservative journalists to mount an attack on Carter over this issue. On 19th April, George Will wrote about Carter and the Shah and said; "It is sad that an Administration that knows so much about morality has so little dignity."

On 19th April, Rosalynn Carter wrote in her diary: We can't get away from Iran. Many people - Kissinger, David Rockefeller, Howard Baker, John McCloy, Gerald Ford - all are after Jimmy to bring the shah to the United States, but Jimmy says it's been too long, and anti-American and anti-shah sentiments have escalated so that he doesn't want to. Jimmy said he explained to all of them that the Iranians might kidnap our Americans who are still there."

McCloy had meetings with President Carter in the White House on 16th May and 12th June where he outlined his reasons for providing the Shah with sanctuary. Carter listened politely to his arguments but refused to change his mind.

During the summer of 1979 McCloy contacted Zbigniew Brzezinski, Cyrus Vance, Walter Mondale and Dean Rusk about the Shah being allowed to live in the United States. McCloy told them that Carter's refusal to provide sanctuary to an old U.S. ally was "ungentlemanly" and dismissed the idea that lives in Iran might be jeopardized. Vance later recalled that: "John (McCloy) is a very prolific letter writer. The morning mail often contained something from him about the Shah".

In July 1979, Mondale and Brzezinski told Jimmy Carter that they had changed their minds and now supported asylum for the Shah. Carter replied: "F*** the Shah. I'm not going to welcome him here when he has other places to go where he'll be safe." He added that despite the fact that "Kissinger, Rockefeller and McCloy had been waging a constant campaign on the subject" he did not want the Shah "here playing tennis while Americans in Teheran were being kidnapped or even killed."

McCloy then tried another tactic in order to destabilize Carter's administration. In September, a story was leaked that the CIA had "discovered" a Soviet combat brigade in Cuba. It was claimed that this violated the agreement reached during the Cuban Missile Crisis. McCloy, who had negotiated the agreement with Adlai Stevenson and the Soviets in 1962, knew this was not true. The agreement said that only those Soviet troops associated with the missiles had to leave the island. There was never a complete ban on all Soviet troops in Cuba. Therefore the presence of Soviet combat troops in Cuba was not a violation of the 1962 agreement.

In October, 1979, David Rockefeller's assistant, Joseph Reed, called the State Department and claimed that the Shah had cancer and needed immediate treatment in a U.S. medical facility. Cyrus Vance now told Carter that the Shah should be allowed in as a matter of "common decency". Carter's chief of staff, Hamilton Jordon, argued that if the Shah died outside the United States, Kissinger and his friends would say "that first you caused the Shah's downfall and now you've killed him." Carter replied: "What are you guys going to advise me to do if they overrun our embassy and take our people hostage?"

Faced with the now unanimous opposition of his closest advisers, the president reluctantly agreed to admit the Shah. He arrived at New York Hospital on 22nd October, 1979. Joseph Reed circulated a memo to McCloy and other members of Project Alpha: "Our mission impossible is completed. My applause is like thunder." Less than two weeks later, Iranian militants stormed the U.S. Embassy in Teheran and took hostage 66 Americans.

McCloy now persuaded Jimmy Carter to freeze all Iran's assets in the United States. This was the day before Iran's $4.05 million interest payment was due on its $500 million loan. As this was not now paid, Chase Manhattan Bank announced that the Iranian government was in default. The bank was now allowed to seize all of Iran's Chase accounts and used this money to "offset" any outstanding Iranian loans. In fact, by the end of this process, the bank ended up in profit from the deal.

Is it possible that Project Alpha was really about creating a situation where Chase Manhattan could seize Iranian assets rather than to get the Shah into the United States.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...756C0A962948260

R.M. GLEN, ALIXE C. REED ARE MARRIED

Published: May 20, 1984

Alixe Claire Reed, deputy press secretary to Vice President Bush, and Robert Maxwell Glen, a political columnist for the News America Syndicate, both of Washington, were married yesterday in St. Paul's Roman Catholic Church in Greenwich, Conn. The Rev. Belasalus Rearris performed the ceremony.

Diana Frances Reed and Cynthia Elizabeth Reed were maids of honor. for their sister, a daughter of Adrian P. Reed of Centerville, Md., and Ariane Wellin of Greenwich. The bride, who graduated from the Greenwich Academy and Hollins College, is a granddaughter of Permelia Reed and the late Joseph V. Reed, a founder of the American Shakespeare Theater in Stratford, Conn., and a leading patron of the American stage. Her father, formerly an investment banker with White Weld & Company in New York, raises soybeans and corn in Centerville.

Mr. Glen, a son of Dr. and Mrs. Dulaney Glen of Pfafftown, N.C., graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His father, who was best man, is an internist in Winston-Salem, N.C.

Aliia Weaver.Married in Greenwich; Bride ol Nathaniel Pryor Reed --...

- New York Times - Jan 10, 1965

Samuel Po Reed and lN[rs. Joseph V. Reed Jr., sister-in-law of the bridegroom ... Adrian P. Reed was best man for his brother. Samuel P. and Joseph V. Reed ...

PERMELIA PRYOR'S PLANS.; Attendants for Her Marriage to Joseph V. Reed on Dec. 31.

New York Times - Dec 11, 1927

Samuel F. Pryor of Greenwich, and i Joseph Verner Reed of Denver, Col., :will take place at the home of the bride, the -yory, in Field Point' Park, ...

- TIME http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/...,765913,00.html

Monday, Aug. 11, 1941

Died. William Rhodes Davis, 52, the oil world's "mystery man" of World War ii; in Houston, Tex. In 1938 he fixed the barter deal which gave Germany and Italy some 20 million barrels of Mexican oil, some of it expropriated from U.S. and British oil companies, and in late 1939 he came back from Germany with a negotiated peace conference proposal.

British WWII spymaster, Stephenson, aka "Intrepid" William Stephenson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia head of British espionage in the western hemisphere, later, in his dictated memoirs, allowed that he did it..."removed" William Rhodes Davis: Outing the Senator: Sex, Spies, and ... - Google Book Search

Here is some pretty persuasive documentation that Goering's "agent" in the US, William Rhodes Davis,

pryor rhodes marquis childs - Google Book Search

Dark Horse: A Biography of Wendell Willkie - Page 171

by Steve Neal - Biography & Autobiography - 1984 - 371 pages

After the election, it was learned that William Rhodes Davis, ... Willkie told

Marquis Childs that he had never heard of Davis until Pryor told him about ...

pryor rhodes scarsdale - Google Book Search

After a week, Pryor took Marshall to the Scarsdale home of fifty-one-year-old

William Rhodes Davis, an independent oil operator. ...

Exquisite Befuddlement - TIME

Monday, Jan. 06, 1941

.....One hundred and seventy prominent U. S. citizens petitioned the President to aid England more. Dog-Fancier Albert Payson Terhune made a prophecy on his 68th birthday: The U. S. will get in the war this year. The Saturday Evening Post grumpily declared the Johnson Act might as well be repealed, since common sense had been. Anne Lindbergh's book* was described by the Nation, as "most reactionary and pernicious." Her mind was described by Louisville Courier-Journal Editor Herbert Agar as "painfully divided against itself" and as producing "some ugly examples of confused thought." Historian Allan Nevins, writing in the New York Times, implied that "her wave of the future" was "a wave of the past.".......

.... Organized hastily three weeks ago in Iowa was a new isolationist group (No Foreign War Committee) headed by Verne Marshall, editor of the Cedar Rapids Gazette, a dark, hard-bitten veteran of World War I and of numerous local crusades. (In 1936 Marshall and his Gazette managed to have 31 Iowa State officials indicted, and the Gazette was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for "most meritorious service to the community." Same day the Iowa Supreme Court dismissed the indictments on technical grounds.) Marshall moved to Manhattan, took luxurious headquarters (recently Willkie's) for his committee, at once paid $41,000 for full-page advertisements in 60 papers in 51 cities, asking for money to fight interventionists. Another ad was set for this week in 79 papers in 57 cities.

Marshall, who once described himself as a "rabble-rouser" of the first World War, planned a St. Louis mass meeting soon after Jan. 1, to be addressed by Colonel Lindbergh. ....

pryor gave lindbergh - Google Search

CHARLES A. LINDBERGH AND FAMILY: An Inventory of Their Papers at ...

Samuel F. Pryor, Executive Vice President to Pan Am for 28 years, was the cause of Lindbergh's coming to Maui. Pryor gave Lindbergh 5 acres to build his ...

CHARLES A. LINDBERGH AND FAMILY: An Inventory of Their Papers at the Minnesota Historical Society

Gibbon Secret Rests Near Maui Church - International Primate ...

Six diminutive, weathered cement markers lie between the graves of Pryor and Lindbergh in the historic church cemetery located on the edge of Kipahulu town. ...

Gibbon Secret Rests Near Maui Church - International Primate Protection League ~ IPPL

Consider when reading the following that it was Atty. General Tom Clark, most likely with the knowledge and approval of democratic president Harry Truman, who fired O. John Rogge, author of the "Nazi Report", and thus kept it from the public until 1961, when it's publication went largely unnoticed:

the hottest reports in Washington Is now almost burning up Its ...

St. Petersburg Times - Google News Archive - Sep 21, 1946

John Rogge, on the basis of Interviews with Hermann Goering and other German prisoners. ... tools of the Nazi stooges are Senator Bennett Clark of Missouri judge ...

It is a report on certain high-placed Americans who co-operated with the Nazis before Pearl Harbor...

However, it steps of some very powerful toes....so the bets are it will never be published....

The Rogge report also shows how the First National Bank of Boston loaned the money to finance Davis's German oil deal.

One chapter in the Rogge report is devoted exclusively to Lindbergh....

JURY IS SELECTED FOR TRIAL OF HILL; All-Male Panel Will Hear Perjury Evidence Against Fish's Secretary

Special to THE NEW YORK TIMES.

January 8, 1942, Thursday

SENATORS ARE NAMED AT THE TRIAL OF HILL; Grand Jury Secretary Identifies Speeches Taken From Mailbags

January 9, 1942, Friday

WITNESS SAYS HILL USED LUNDEEN FRANK; Mrs. Spielman Testifies Viereck Wrote Speeches for Senator

January 10, 1942, Saturday

HILL LINKS FISH WITH VIERECK ACTS; Convicted Secretary Reverses Testimony in Telling of His Introduction to Nazi Agent MAILED SPEECH ON 'FRANK' Witness Says 125,000 Copies Were Sent Out and He Got 'Tip' of $100 From Defendant

February 20, 1942, Friday

SAYS MRS. LUNDEEN TOOK VIERECK DATA; Former Secretary to Senator Testifies That Widow "Stripped' Files of Records TELLS OF SPEECH-WRITING Witness Asserts Joint Effort Produced Anti-British Attack -- Viereck Paid by Nazi

February 25, 1942, Wednesday

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/...,773070,00.html

The Memory of Fish

Monday, Mar. 02, 1942

Ham Fish's memory went dead. The gangling, trumpet-tongued Congressman was on the witness stand in Washington, called there to explain his relations with George Sylvester Viereck, veteran Nazi propaganda agent. Viereck was on trial, charged with failing to tell the State Department all about his activities. One Government witness was George Hill, World War I buddy and for some 20 years office clerk to Ham Fish. Because he had once denied knowing Agent Viereck, Hill himself was tried for perjury a few weeks ago, had been sentenced to two-to-six years in jail. He took it like a man who was loyally suppressing a big secret. But in court last week, Hill admitted that:

¶He had served as handy man of a propaganda ring managed by Viereck and Prescott Dennett, Washington publicist.

¶ Ham Fish had introduced him to Viereck, after Fish had held a long conference with the Nazi agent in Fish's private office.

¶ Viereck then instructed him to mail out, under frank of Minnesota's late Senator Ernest Lundeen, copies of an isolationist speech Lundeen made in the Senate.

¶Fish provided Viereck with a mailing list of some 100,000 names.

Ham Fish strode in with majestic dignity. But his memory was in bad shape. He could not be sure whether he had introduced Viereck to his secretary, George Hill. All such details had faded into a fog. Prosecutor William Power Maloney asked suavely whether it was a coincidence that Viereck's views as a Nazi propagandist "coincide so closely with your views as a Congressman at this time." Mr. Fish could still shout. He leaned forward, shouted: "The man who made that statement lies." Maloney asked him whether he referred to Viereck. Fish replied: "I am referring to you. ... I didn't come here to be insulted."

Said Maloney: "I think the American people have been insulted."

http://query.nytimes.com/beta/search/query...&submit=sub

SIDELIGHTS OF THE WEEK

One implicated legislator was the late Senator Ernest Lundeen, Minnesota isolationist, who, it was said, had inserted speeches prepared by Mr. Viereck into ...March 8, 1942

http://news.google.com/archivesearch?hl=en...range=1944,1945

NAZI SCHEME TO DEFEAT FDR TOLD BY GOERING

Pay-Per-View - Los Angeles Times - ProQuest Archiver - Jul 8, 1946

A Nazi scheme to use a huge fund to try and defeat President Roosevelt in the 1940 election campaign was disclosed today by Asst. Atty. Gen. O. John Rogge.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/...?iid=digg_share

Out of Turn Nov. 04, 1946

"At quiet Swarthmore College one night last week, 0. (for Oet je) John

Rogge, special assistant to the U.S. Attorney General and prosecutor

of the hapless 1944 Washington sedition trials, raked over a few coals

concerning Nazi wartime intrigue in U.S. politics.

Rogge traced out the oft-told tale of the late oilman William R.

Davis, who, inspired by the German Government, had tried to mediate

World War II back in 1940. He also mentioned John L. Lewis, Senator

Burton K. Wheeler and other touchy names in the same breath with Nazi

bigwigs.

To the familiar Davis story Rogge added the authority of months spent

in Germany this year, poring over Nazi records. Upon his return Rogge

had turned over a report to Attorney General Tom Clark with the

expectation that it would be published. Instead, Clark had kept it in

the files.

After Rogge's Swarthmore speech Pennsylvania Republicans gleefully

recalled that pro-German Bill Davis once had connections with another

prominent politico: Senator Joe Guffey, facing defeat Nov. 5.

Indignantly Tom Clark charged Rogge with willfully violating Justice

Department rules by making a speech based on the quashed report. Then

he fired him."

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.htm...78ED85F428585F9

The New York Times

May 27, 1956, Sunday

Nazi Data Link Republican To 1940 Propaganda Drive; A Congressman Tried to Get Convention to Back Isolationism, Records State-- Hamilton Fish Denies German Aid

WASHINGTON, May 26-- Long-secret documents made public today recounted that Nazi propagandists had collaborated with "a well-known Republican Congressman" in trying to get the 1940 Republican National Convention to adopt an "isolationist" platform.

http://books.google.com/books?um=1&q=D...nG=Search+Books

Trading with the Enemy: An Exposé of the Nazi-American Money Plot, 1933-1949‎ - Page 65

by Charles Higham - Germany Commerce United States History - 1983 - 277 pages

Hitler said, "Gentlemen, I have reviewed Mr. Davis 's proposition and it sounds

feasible. I want the bank to finance it." Then he walked out. ...

Snippet view - About this book - Add to my shared library - More editions

The Official German Report: Nazi Penetration, 1924-1942

The Official German Report: Nazi Penetration, 1924-1942‎ - Page 239

by Oetje John Rogge - National socialism - 1961 - 478 pages

Hitler said: "Gentlemen, I have reviewed Mr. Davis' proposition and it sounds

feasible, and I want the bank to finance it." As a result of this, ...

Snippet view - About this book - Add to my shared library - More editions

http://books.google.com/books?id=82ohAAAAM...umkK5DNHh5M4CoQ

Mystery Man: William Rhodes Davis, Nazi Agent of Influence

Mystery Man: William Rhodes Davis, Nazi Agent of Influence‎ - Page 16

by Dale Harrington - History - 1999 - 276 pages

Hitler sent a reply for Davis to appear the following day at the Reichsbank.22

The next ... "I have reviewed Mr. Davis's proposition and it sounds feasible

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_von_Clemm

Werner C. von Clemm (27 September 1897 - 14 April 1989, Biddeford, Maine) was born into a German family that married into German nobility, the Nazi party and prominent American families. His father-in-law was a Vice President of Citibank. In 1922 he immigrated to the United States. Prior to this he had served in the German army during World War I. He was a representative of the German international banking firm Hardy & Co. and an employee of the Pioneer Import Corp., which imported materials from Germany and handled his cousin and Nazi diplomat, Joachim von Ribbentrop's champagne business. Along with his twin brother, Karl he had become friends with U.S. oil man, William Rhodes Davis. In the United States Werner became Vice President of Davis' Davis & Co., which shipped large quantities of oil to Germany and became a propaganda strategist and financial aid of the America First Committee, which encouraged American isolationism. In 1940 the Nazis seized large quantities of diamonds from Belgium and Holland, which Werner was smuggling to the U.S. To avoid detection he moved the diamonds through various European cities, shipped them to South America and they eventually found their way to New York. The operation was stumbled upon by mistake by agents of the Treasury Department when they searched a Budweiser beer box being carried by two American soldiers of German descent. On inspection of the box they found it had a false bottom under which were one hundred letters and government bonds. The letters detailed Werner's diamond smuggling operation. After further investigation von Clemm was arrested on 28 January 1942 and was sentenced to two years in prison for his crime. On his release he entered private banking. He was also an agent of the German intelligence agency, Abwehr and was involved in espionage during World War II.

His son Michael von Clemm went on to become a leading American banker who was involved in Western banking operations in Africa and helped found Canary Wharf.

http://news.google.com/archivesearch?hl=en...+president+bush

Michael von Clemm, 62, Eurobonds Pioneer - New York Times

Michael von Clemm, an investment banker who used a lifelong interest in anthropology to ... where since 1996 he served as president of Templeton College , ...

NEWS ANALYSIS Has Bush Taken the Right People to Asia? Trade: Heavily...

Pay-Per-View - Los Angeles Times - ProQuest Archiver - Jan 1, 1992

Michael von Clemm Executive vice president/Merrill Lynch & Co. ... "Bush picked the leaders of those companies which are perceived to be most impacted by ...

EUROMARKET PIONEER PLANS TO LEAVE MERRILL

- Boston Globe - NewsBank - Jan 21, 1992

Michael von Clemm, a prominent international financier with civic and ... von Clemm was among the corporate executives who accompanied President Bush to ...

If you click the first link displayed on this page: http://hnn.us/articles/1810.html

...you can read the results of John Buchanan's 2003 National Archives research.....

The documents show that Joseph V. Reed's grandfather (mentioned several times in the John Simkin post quoted above), Samuel F. Pryor, was an original incorporating director in the Harriman's Hamburg America shipping line, and in the formation of Union Bank, and both were seized in WWII by the US government "Alien Property Custodian", while Prescott Bush was a stockholder and director of Union Bank.

Samuel F. Pryor came to NYC from St. Louis, as GHW Bush grandfather, George Walker did. The two were partners, here:

Deals & Developments - TIME

"Directors of the $25000000-in-assets Atlantic Fruit & Sugar Co. are: Samuel F. Pryor of Remington Arms Co.; lanky Vincent Astar; Frederick Baldwin Adams, ..."

www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,846962,00.html

The WWI war industries board is a good place to start. The chairman was Wall Street investment banker, Bernard Baruch. Assistant Chairman was Clarence Dillon, father of future US Treasury Sect'y and Jupiter Island, Fl, resident, C. Douglas Dillon. Clarence was described by Time, in 1957, as "one of the richest men in the United States". John Foster Dulles, "received an Army commission as Major on the War Industries Board"...and, "Samuel P. Bush became chief of the Ordnance, Small Arms, and Ammunition Section, with national responsibility for government assistance to and relations with munitions companies....."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Foster_Dulles

"John Foster Dulles received an Army commission as Major on the War Industries Board.... "

Decades later, Dulles' brother, Allen, was set up at the outset of US involvement in WWII in an office next to Stephenson, aka "Intrepid". the British secret agent. mentioned above:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Welsh_Dulles

Background in intelligence

"Dulles was appointed by William J. Donovan to become head of operations in New York for the Coordinator of Information (COI), which was set up in Room 3603 of Rockefeller Center, taking over offices staffed by Britain's MI6. The COI was the precursor to the Office of Strategic Services, renamed in 1942...."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_Dillon

"During World War I, Bernard Baruch, chairman of the War Industries Board, (known as the Czar of American industry) asked (Clarence) Dillon to be assistant chairman of the War Industries Board.

Dillon was director of American Foreign Securities Corporation, which he had set up in 1915 to finance the French Government’s purchases of munitions in the United States."

Samuel Bush worked for Frank Rockefeller, and was his successor as president of Buckeye Steel Castings in Ohio.... Frank was William's and John D's brother, and William's only daughter, (Ethel) Geraldine, married Marcellus Dodge Hartley, creator of and sole owner of Remington-Union Cartridge Co., the principle company whose operations Samuel Bush would oversee in his position at the War Industries Board:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Rockefeller

"William Avery Rockefeller, Jr. (May 31, 1841-June 24, 1922), American financier, was a cofounder with his older brother John D. Rockefeller of the prominent United States Rockefeller family. William Avery Rockefeller, Jr. was the son of William Avery Rockefeller, Sr. and Eliza (Davison) Rockefeller...."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcellus_Hartley_Dodge,_Sr.

"Marcellus Hartley Dodge, Sr. (February 28, 1881 – December 25, 1963) was the chairman of the board of Remington Arms Company and a member of the family associated with the Phelps Dodge Corporation....

....The death of Marcellus Hartley in 1902 left his grandson as heir to a large fortune of 60 million at the age of twenty-one, while he was attending Columbia University and living with his grandmother....

....Marriage

In 1907 he became engaged and married to (Ethel) Geraldine Rockefeller of 689 Fifth Avenue. She was a child of William and Almira Geraldine Goodsell Rockefeller, and was estimated to have her own fortune of over 100 million dollars. They were said to be the wealthiest newlyweds in the country when they married. Initially, when in New Jersey they lived together at Hartley Farms, a country estate purchased by Marcellus and his aunt, Helen Hartley Jenkins, in 1904...... "

Samuel P. Bush was put in charge of helping small arms and ammo manufacture Remington Arms maximize profits under it's ownership by Marcellus Hartley Dodge, and it's managing director, Samuel F. Pryor:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_P._Bush

"....Just two years later, in 1901 he returned to Columbus to be General Manager of Buckeye Steel Castings Company, which manufactured railway parts. The company was run by Frank Rockefeller, the brother of oil magnate John D. Rockefeller, and among its clients were the railroads controlled by E. H. Harriman. The Bush and Harriman families would be closely associated at least until the end of World War II. In 1908 Rockefeller retired and Bush became President of Buckeye, a position he would hold until 1927, becoming one of the top industrialists of his generation.......

....Political prominence

In the spring of 1918, banker Bernard Baruch was asked to reorganize the War Industries Board as the U.S. prepared to enter World War I, and placed several prominent businessmen to key posts. Bush became chief of the Ordnance, Small Arms, and Ammunition Section, with national responsibility for government assistance to and relations with munitions companies..... "

Unfortunately for Marcellus Hartley Dodge, he had geared up his company for war profits too early to avoid being pushed aside by nervous bankers...the US government had not rushed to war alongside Hartley:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html...9649D946796D6CF

BANKERS NOW RUN THE REMINGTON CO.; Kimball Succeeds Dodge as Head of $50,000,000 Munitions Concern. COMMITTEE AT THE HELM Extensive Loans by Banks Cause Readjustment of Affairs, Now Satisfactory.

December 7, 1916, Thursday

"...Samuel F. Pryor, Vice President of the Remington-Union Metallic Cartridge Company, and W.E.S. Griswold. Mr. Pryor has been elected chairman of the committee. Marcellus Harley Dodge, who owns all but a few shares of the company's $50,000,000, capital, has retired from the presidency and has been succeeded by Mr. Kimball....

....The company, it was said recently, strengthened its financial position in the last few months by the sale of machinery which had been bought and stored early in the war, when Mr. Dodge and his associates believed it wise to plan ahead for the filling of more war contracts than they then had in mind.... "

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/...ry%2016,%201916

"Our Greatest Arms Plant

Remington-Union Cartridge Factory ar Bridgeport an Alladin's Castle--Industrial Army of 50,000 Organized by One Man

,,,Marcellus Harley Dodge is the Sole Proprietor...

...In April, 1914, Mr. Dodge associated Samuel F. Pryor with himself in his business. Mr. Pryor had been Vice President of the Simmons Hardware Company of St. Louis and the Southern Car Wheel Company.... "

The Rockefellers' finance boys tried to blame their losses on a government that could not be pushed in WWI as rapidly as these "merchants of death", had planned for:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html...FB467838C609EDE

Special to The New York Times.

GUNMAKERS TELL OF ARMY REBUFF Encouragement from Navy. War Department "Not Interested." Didn't Like the Gun Offered. Ordered Some Browning Guns. Manufacture of Rifles. Remedied British Defects. Changes Took Up Two Months. Far Ahead on Rifle Deliveries.

December 20, 1917, Thursday

"WASHINGTON, Dec. 19.--Voluntary offers by machine gun and rifle manufacturers to rush their factories at top speed to equip the American Army, before the United States went into the war against Germany, were rebuffed by the War Department, according to evidence given today before the Military Affairs Committee of the Senate. ."

Walter S. Carpenter, first modern, non-Du Pont family head of Du Pont Corps., represented Du Pont in it's 1933 buyout of Remington....he negotiated the sale with Samuel Pryor of Remington, and he was then "invited" to have a home on Jupiter Island: http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.htm...78ED85F468485F9

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_S._Carpenter%2C_Jr.

http://www.townofjupiterisland.com/history.php

"...The price for the property was set at $25,000. A group of lawyers from Biddle’s office bought the assets and property and sent Forrest Hyde to Jupiter Island to see what their $25,000 had bought.

What Hyde saw was a rundown resort, the Island Inn, badly in need of expensive repairs, with a delinquent tax bill of $40,000. Hyde wanted no part of the investment. Through John Simpson, The Island Inn manager, Hyde was put in touch with William S. Barstow.

Barstow , a retired utilities executive and former partner of Thomas Edison, had lived on the Island for several years. When approached by Hyde, Barstow contacted three other Island residents: Arthur S. Dwight; Joseph V. Reed; and Joseph Reed’s brother-in-law, Samuel F. Pryor. The group formed a new Hobe Sound Company and bought the property at the $25,000 price Hyde’s group had paid, and, in addition, gave the Hyde group 20% of the common stock in the new Hobe Sound Company.

The purchase made by Barstow, Reed and Pryor included the Inn, the golf course, employee houses, and unsold land north of the fork at South Beach Road and Gomez Avenue. It also included other real estate on the mainland.

In 1934, Joseph V. Reed purchased the other owners’ shares in the Hobe Sound Company and began a new period of Island development. The entire property remained under Reed family ownership until 1996.

In 1944, with 75 residents on the Island , Joseph V. Reed and Permelia P. Reed founded the Jupiter Island Resident’s Committee and the Island Club and its Board of Directors. In the next year, 1945, Joseph Reed donated the land for the police station and the firehouse. Proximity to the wooden cottages and main Clubhouse was of paramount importance. The Reeds also gave the land that is now the Hobe Sound Beach to Martin County for use as a public beach.... "

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks to Tom Blackwell for passing this on:

Bush and SMU have set up new web pages for the Bush Library & Institute:

http://smu.edu/bushlibrary/

http://www.georgewbushlibrary.com/

The Bush-Cheney Alumni Association:

http://www.43alumni.com/

SMU has now demolished everything on Binkley Avenue in the block to the

East of the Moody Coliseum, and closed the street there. That's where I

parked for the 16th Senate District Democratic Party Convention in 2008.

They have now torn down the historic Mustang Apartments on Binkley.

That was the last of 3 residences in the area of John Hinckley. He lived there during the time he purchased the gun from Rocky's Pawn Shop. The Dallas Morning News published a diagram of the location of the Bush Library and Institute. It is shown on top of the very location where Hinckley lived. This was published in the printed copy of the Dallas Morning News on January 22, but is not yet on the Internet. (I do have photos of the Mustang Apartments.)

--

Regards, TOM BLACKWELL, PO Box 25403, Dallas, Texas 75225

http://DemocraticResearch.Org

Link to comment
Share on other sites

John, I must respectfully disagree with your statement that Oltmans reflected a consistent left-wing position. I found numerous instances in which he was trying to obtain audiences with prominent American politicians to warn them of various threats from communists and national liberation movements. He was indeed all over the map. I find Oltmans an enormously contradictory character, almost as deep and operationally conflicted as de Mohrenschildt himself. The de Mohrenschildt "confessions" to Oltmans must be considered in the context of Oltmans' own murky identity and motives, and Oltmans' claims to the authorities were often inconsistent and surprisingly vague and inarticulate for someone who claimed to be serious journalist.

Given the time and resources, I will be glad to publish more on this topic. btw, readers who wish to support ongoing investigative efforts can become sustainers of the Real News Project, at www.whowhatwhy.com , a nonprofit, noncommercial reporting site that will, we expect, generate reporting on many topics that urgently cry out for careful investigative inquiry.

On pages 263-274 you consider the case of Willem Oltmans and the evidence that he supplied to the House Select Committee on Assassinations on 4th January 1977. You make the comment that: “His profile at times appears less that of the typical left-leaning Dutch journalist and more suggestive of a U.S. intelligence agent. Former colleagues of Oltmans, who is deceased, described him to me as a complex and mysterious figure. As will become clear, Oltmans was a cipher to one and all, sometimes seeming to be determined to expose the truth, and sometimes to do the opposite. Perhaps he was something of a free agent, pursuing a particular course yet unhappy about it. But one thing is certain: just as de Mohrenschildt helped steer Oswald, to a lesser extent Oltmans did the same for de Mohrenschildt.”

I have carried out some research into Oltman's career and would argue that his reporting of events in Indonesia, Cuba and North Vietnam suggest he reflected a consistent left-wing position.

In 2000 Oltmans won his legal case against the Dutch government. The jury agreed that the government conspired to keep him out of work, for which it had to pay him 8 million guilders in damages. This dates back to reports that he was writing about Netherlands New Guinea in 1956. This upset Joseph Luns, the Dutch minister of foreign affairs. The court ruled that Oltmans was right when he claimed that Luns did what he could to sabotage his journalistic career. Luns was a close friend of the CIA and eventually was appointed Secretary General of NATO.

We also know that during this period the CIA was working with Luns in an attempt to overthrow President Sukarno of Indonesia. The head of this CIA operation was Al Ulmer, who ran the agency's Far East operations. In fact, Ulmer lost his job after the failure of the CIA backed coup in May 1958. As Thomas Powers, the author of The Man Who Kept The Secrets (1979), a book about Richard Helms, points out: "The result, of course, was a humiliation for the United States, but it was a quiet humiliation. The Indonesians knew who had been behind the rebels, of course, but they elected to treat the matter calmly... and the American press somehow never got wind of the CIA's role."

Oltmans, who enjoyed a good relationship with Sukarno, did know what was going on and reported this in the Dutch press. This does not sound like someone under the control of the CIA. In fact, by 1962, this journalist who was reporting on events in Cuba and North Vietnam in the early 1960s, was seen as a hero by left-wing students. It is during this period that his network was infiltrated by CIA agent Werner Verrips.

Oltmans also claims that he was supplying President Kennedy with information about the situation in New Guinea. Whatever the truth of this statement, Kennedy, against CIA advice, applied pressure on the Dutch government to hand over the territory to a temporary UN administration (UNTEA). On May 1, 1963, Indonesia took control of the country. It was not only over the policy towards Cuba that the CIA was angry with Kennedy.

Without the testimony of Oltmans I don’t think the story about George de Mohrenschildt claims about the assassination would have entered the public domain. Nor would much attention have been paid to his suicide three months after Oltmans’ testimony to the HSCA.

What is significant is that at the time of his death he was taking part in a planned four-day interview at the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach with Edward Jay Epstein on behalf of the Reader's Digest magazine. In my view, this was an attempt by the CIA to discover just how much de Mohrenschildt knew about the assassination. We now know that de Mohrenschildt had given an interview to Dick Russell in June 1976. See this thread for Dick’s comments on this:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.ph...13575&st=60

I know I would trust the evidence of Willem Oltmans and Dick Russell over that of Edward Jay Epstein.

What is your view of the de Mohrenschildt’s confession he made to Oltmans?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

John, I must respectfully disagree with your statement that Oltmans reflected a consistent left-wing position. I found numerous instances in which he was trying to obtain audiences with prominent American politicians to warn them of various threats from communists and national liberation movements. He was indeed all over the map. I find Oltmans an enormously contradictory character, almost as deep and operationally conflicted as de Mohrenschildt himself. The de Mohrenschildt "confessions" to Oltmans must be considered in the context of Oltmans' own murky identity and motives, and Oltmans' claims to the authorities were often inconsistent and surprisingly vague and inarticulate for someone who claimed to be serious journalist.

I would be interested in receiving more information about Oltmans “trying to obtain audiences with prominent American politicians to warn them of various threats from communists and national liberation movements”. Of course, I did not mean that Oltmans’ left-wing journalist was “pro-communist”. Radicals in the 1960s and 1970s often took a liberation socialist position and were often very critical of communist regimes such as the Soviet Union.

What interests me about Oltmans (De Mohrenschildt) claims against H. L. Hunt and the oil industry was that they mirrored what was said by Joachim Joesten (Oswald, Assassin or Fall Guy? and Thomas G. Buchanan (Who Killed Kennedy?) Both these books were published in 1964.

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

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

As a result of these books being published the intelligence services engaged on a smear campaign against both these authors as being “communist agents”. We now know because of declassified documents that Mark Lane was also targeted in this way. In Plausible Denial (1991):

More than a decade after the assassination, when I won a lawsuit against various police and spy organizations in the United States district court in Washington, D.C., pursuant to the order of the court, I received many long-suppressed documents.

Among them was a top-secret CIA report. It stated that the CIA was deeply troubled by my work in questioning the conclusions of the Warren Report and that polls that had been taken revealed that almost half of the American people believed as I did. The report stated, "Doubtless polls abroad would show similar, or possibly more adverse, results." This "trend of opinion," the CIA said, "is a matter of concern" to "our organization." To counter developing opinion within the United States, the CIA suggested that steps be taken. It should be emphasized, the CIA said, that "the members of the Warren Commission were naturally chosen for their integrity, experience, and prominence. They represented both major parties, and they and their staff were deliberately drawn from all sections of the country. Just because of the standing of the commissioners, efforts to impugn their rectitude and wisdom tend to cast doubt on the whole leadership of American society.

The purpose of the CIA secret document was apparent. In this instance, there was no need for incisive analysis. The CIA report stated "The aim of this dispatch is to provide material for countering and discrediting the claims of the conspiracy theorists, so as to inhibit the circulation of such claims in other countries. Background information is supplied in a classified section and in a number of unclassified attachments." The commission had been chosen in such a fashion so that it might subsequently be asserted that those who questioned its finding, by comparing the known facts to the false conclusions offered by the commission, might be said to be subversive.

Who were these people who wished to throw suspicion upon the leaders of the land? The CIA report listed them as Mark Lane, Joachim Joesten, as well as a French writer, Leo Sauvage. Most of the criticism was directed at me. The CIA directed that this matter be discussed with "liaison and friendly elite contacts (especially politicians and editors)," instructing these persons "that further speculative discussion only plays into the hands of the opposition." The CIA continued: "Point out also that parts of the conspiracy talk appear to be deliberately generated by Communist propagandists. Urge them to use their influence to discourage unfounded and irresponsible speculation." The CIA was quite specific about the means that should be employed to prevent criticism of the report:

"Employ propaganda assets to answer and refute the attacks of the critics. Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose. The unclassified attachments to this guidance should provide useful background material for passage to assets. Our play should point out, as applicable, that the critics are (i) wedded to theories adopted before the evidence was in, (ii) politically interested, (iii) financially interested, (iv) hasty and inaccurate in their research, or (v) infatuated with their own theories. In the course of discussions of the whole phenomenon of criticism, a useful strategy may be to single out Edward Jay Epstein's theory for attack, using the attached Fletcher Knebel article and Spectator piece for background." According to the CIA, my book, Rush to Judgment, was "much more difficult to answer as a whole." The agency document did not list any errors in the book.

Just in case the book reviewers did not get the point, the CIA offered specific language that they might incorporate into their critiques. "Reviewers" of the books "might be encouraged to add to their account the idea that, checking back with the Report itself, they found it far superior to the work of its critics."

Among those who criticized Rush to Judgment and other books along lines similar to those suggested by the CIA were the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and, especially, Walter Cronkite and CBS. Among those who did not march in lockstep with the intelligence agencies' effort to destroy the First Amendment were the Houston Post; Norman Mailer, who reviewed Rush to Judgment in the United States and Len Deighton, who reviewed it in London.

The question persists, in view of the elaborate and illegal program undertaken by the CIA to malign American citizens and to discourage publishers from printing dissents from the Warren Commission Report, as to the motivation for these efforts. Again, we turn to the CIA dispatch: "Our organization itself is directly involved: among other facts, we contributed information to the investigation." Yes, the CIA was directly involved and it did make its contribution to the investigation. What else the CIA did to constitute its "direct" involvement in the assassination was left unsaid by the authors of its report.

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

Is it possible that Oltmans is a victim of this same CIA smear campaign?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

John, I must respectfully disagree with your statement that Oltmans reflected a consistent left-wing position. I found numerous instances in which he was trying to obtain audiences with prominent American politicians to warn them of various threats from communists and national liberation movements. He was indeed all over the map. I find Oltmans an enormously contradictory character, almost as deep and operationally conflicted as de Mohrenschildt himself. The de Mohrenschildt "confessions" to Oltmans must be considered in the context of Oltmans' own murky identity and motives, and Oltmans' claims to the authorities were often inconsistent and surprisingly vague and inarticulate for someone who claimed to be serious journalist.

I would be interested in receiving more information about Oltmans “trying to obtain audiences with prominent American politicians to warn them of various threats from communists and national liberation movements”. Of course, I did not mean that Oltmans’ left-wing journalist was “pro-communist”. Radicals in the 1960s and 1970s often took a liberation socialist position and were often very critical of communist regimes such as the Soviet Union.

What interests me about Oltmans (De Mohrenschildt) claims against H. L. Hunt and the oil industry was that they mirrored what was said by Joachim Joesten (Oswald, Assassin or Fall Guy? and Thomas G. Buchanan (Who Killed Kennedy?) Both these books were published in 1964.

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

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

As a result of these books being published the intelligence services engaged on a smear campaign against both these authors as being “communist agents”. We now know because of declassified documents that Mark Lane was also targeted in this way. In Plausible Denial (1991):

More than a decade after the assassination, when I won a lawsuit against various police and spy organizations in the United States district court in Washington, D.C., pursuant to the order of the court, I received many long-suppressed documents.

Among them was a top-secret CIA report. It stated that the CIA was deeply troubled by my work in questioning the conclusions of the Warren Report and that polls that had been taken revealed that almost half of the American people believed as I did. The report stated, "Doubtless polls abroad would show similar, or possibly more adverse, results." This "trend of opinion," the CIA said, "is a matter of concern" to "our organization." To counter developing opinion within the United States, the CIA suggested that steps be taken. It should be emphasized, the CIA said, that "the members of the Warren Commission were naturally chosen for their integrity, experience, and prominence. They represented both major parties, and they and their staff were deliberately drawn from all sections of the country. Just because of the standing of the commissioners, efforts to impugn their rectitude and wisdom tend to cast doubt on the whole leadership of American society.

The purpose of the CIA secret document was apparent. In this instance, there was no need for incisive analysis. The CIA report stated "The aim of this dispatch is to provide material for countering and discrediting the claims of the conspiracy theorists, so as to inhibit the circulation of such claims in other countries. Background information is supplied in a classified section and in a number of unclassified attachments." The commission had been chosen in such a fashion so that it might subsequently be asserted that those who questioned its finding, by comparing the known facts to the false conclusions offered by the commission, might be said to be subversive.

Who were these people who wished to throw suspicion upon the leaders of the land? The CIA report listed them as Mark Lane, Joachim Joesten, as well as a French writer, Leo Sauvage. Most of the criticism was directed at me. The CIA directed that this matter be discussed with "liaison and friendly elite contacts (especially politicians and editors)," instructing these persons "that further speculative discussion only plays into the hands of the opposition." The CIA continued: "Point out also that parts of the conspiracy talk appear to be deliberately generated by Communist propagandists. Urge them to use their influence to discourage unfounded and irresponsible speculation." The CIA was quite specific about the means that should be employed to prevent criticism of the report:

"Employ propaganda assets to answer and refute the attacks of the critics. Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose. The unclassified attachments to this guidance should provide useful background material for passage to assets. Our play should point out, as applicable, that the critics are (i) wedded to theories adopted before the evidence was in, (ii) politically interested, (iii) financially interested, (iv) hasty and inaccurate in their research, or (v) infatuated with their own theories. In the course of discussions of the whole phenomenon of criticism, a useful strategy may be to single out Edward Jay Epstein's theory for attack, using the attached Fletcher Knebel article and Spectator piece for background." According to the CIA, my book, Rush to Judgment, was "much more difficult to answer as a whole." The agency document did not list any errors in the book.

Just in case the book reviewers did not get the point, the CIA offered specific language that they might incorporate into their critiques. "Reviewers" of the books "might be encouraged to add to their account the idea that, checking back with the Report itself, they found it far superior to the work of its critics."

Among those who criticized Rush to Judgment and other books along lines similar to those suggested by the CIA were the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and, especially, Walter Cronkite and CBS. Among those who did not march in lockstep with the intelligence agencies' effort to destroy the First Amendment were the Houston Post; Norman Mailer, who reviewed Rush to Judgment in the United States and Len Deighton, who reviewed it in London.

The question persists, in view of the elaborate and illegal program undertaken by the CIA to malign American citizens and to discourage publishers from printing dissents from the Warren Commission Report, as to the motivation for these efforts. Again, we turn to the CIA dispatch: "Our organization itself is directly involved: among other facts, we contributed information to the investigation." Yes, the CIA was directly involved and it did make its contribution to the investigation. What else the CIA did to constitute its "direct" involvement in the assassination was left unsaid by the authors of its report.

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

Is it possible that Oltmans is a victim of this same CIA smear campaign?

Thanks, John. That material sent a chill down my spine. I've noticed that same approach of discrediting in at least one major media review of my book. In any case, as relates to Oltmans: as I said, I am not convinced of who/what he was. As I note in Family of Secrets, Oltmans was traveling to Dallas to speak to right-wing women's group auxiliaries, and that began BEFORE the assassination. That means he was in circles of interest at a sensitive moment. If he were simply a left-wing journalist, and an obscure foreign one at that, why were these groups eager to have him of all people come to Dallas in the months and years prior to the assassination in that city? At a minimum, such facts must be addressed before concluding that he was "smeared" for trying to tell the truth. There are many other curiosities about him--and people trying to get to the bottom of the JFK matter who dealt directly with him found him secretive, sometimes hostile, often incoherent. I certainly would not lump him in with Mark Lane or any of the others. Also, if you read his testimony to the House investigators, he can't seem to successfully utter a declarative statement that firmly establishes much of anything. If he was simply a journalist trying to get to the bottom of things, he was the Inspector Clouseau of journalists. Having said that, he may simply have been some combination of seemingly incompatible elements, values and loyalties, and a bit eccentric.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
Guest Tom Scully

Russ, I've described the background of JFK and Jackie's closest realtionship with another couple, outside of family, in the years leading up to late 1963, in this thread:

Charles Leffingwell Bartlett & Russ Baker's "Family of Secrets"

What was the real agenda of Charles L. Bartlett ?

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=14027

Pierre Salinger wrote that Chattanooga Times Washington Correspondent, Bartlett, in the interest of his close relationship with the Kennedys, stopped reporting, for the most part, on the Kennedy administration. Bartlett is said to have stated that he wanted, above all else, a successful JFK presidency, "for the good of the country."

Given that Bartlett was also closely tied to "the men on Jupiter Island", specifically to Prescott and GHW Bush, and their mutual Yale alumni friends, doesn't Bartlett's smear of Adlai Stevenson, post October, 1962.... seem indicative of his decision to commit to his Yale-Bush-MIC roots, vs. his friendship with JFK....as in the first open sign of rebellion (a bold protest/warning from the Yale alumni/MIC contingent) against JFK's perceived dovishness that provided the catalyst to remove him from the presidency?

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=wtgLA...wanted-a-munich

....Stevenson and the White House have denied the role attributed to him in the Post by writers Charles Bartlett and Stewart Alsop....

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=CSkNA...wanted-a-munich

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - Dec 10, 1962

...Nevertheless, Life (magazine) concluded that Alsop and Bartlett "planted the seeds of trouble, which could yet bring about the withdrawal from the government and the end of of a relationship between the President and his U.N. ambassador which has been, on the whole, better than either man really expected."

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...mp;pagewanted=2

Rusk Tells a Kennedy Secret: Fallback Plan in Cuba Crisis

By ERIC PACE

Published: August 28, 1987

Mr. Blight, a psychologist by training, said that the Cordier initiative, as reported by Mr. Rusk, made it seem that President Kennedy, at the time, was willing to have, as Mr. Blight put it, ''a public trade of American missiles in Turkey for the Soviet missiles in Cuba.''

Mr. Blight said a transcription of tape recordings of meetings of Kennedy Administration members of that time showed that ''most of the Kennedy advisers believed that a public trade of missiles would, if not destroy NATO, create an enormous complication'' for the alliance. The reasoning, he said, was that such an exchange ''would have been perceived as selling out a NATO ally'' - Turkey - ''to solve a local problem in the Caribbean that should have been solved in some other way without bringing NATO into the picture at all.'' The transcript of the recordings is to be published in the December issue of the center's quarterly journal, International Security.

Mr. Blight observed that ''the letter that Rusk wrote to me in lieu of coming to the conference, because he was ill, was really the first indication that a lot of us have had that the President may have been willing to do just that, to trade the missiles publicly and risk whatever the consequences would be for the NATO alliance.''

Mr. Blight said it was certain that the Cordier initiative had not been made public elsewhere before the conference and was ''known only to President Kennedy, Secretary Rusk and to Andrew Cordier at the time. And Rusk is the only survivor of that trio - and he told us that he had never shared that information with anybody.'' Value of Missiles Was Limited

Dr. Cordier was a Midwesterner who, after 16 years as a high-ranking official and troubleshooter at the United Nations, left in 1962 and became dean of Columbia's School of International Affairs. He went on to become acting president of the university in 1968 and 1969 before becoming president in 1969 and 1970. He died in 1975.

In a part of Mr. Rusk's letter to Mr. Blight that was not read at the conference but which was made available to The Times yesterday, the former Secretary indicated that the military value of the Jupiter missiles was limited.

''When President Kennedy took office,'' Mr. Rusk wrote, ''he had in front of him a very critical report from the Joint Atomic Committee of Congress about the Jupiter missiles in Turkey and Italy. The committee considered these missiles to be both obsolete and vulnerable.''....

Edited by Tom Scully
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

In Chapter 4 you point out that George H. W. Bush phoned the FBI in Houston a few hours after JFK was assassinated to report that James Parrott had “been talking of killing the president”. You suggest on page 56 that the reason for this call to the FBI might have been to establish in “government investigative files” that at the time of the assassination he was in Tyler, Texas. If that is the case, why would he link it to the assassination of JFK?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In Chapter 4 you point out that George H. W. Bush phoned the FBI in Houston a few hours after JFK was assassinated to report that James Parrott had “been talking of killing the president”. You suggest on page 56 that the reason for this call to the FBI might have been to establish in “government investigative files” that at the time of the assassination he was in Tyler, Texas. If that is the case, why would he link it to the assassination of JFK?

His call establishes two pieces of information in confidential government files: that he was in Tyler, Texas, around the time of the assassination, but also that he was going out of his way to be helpful to assassination investigators (though as we can see, he was not actually being helpful at all, and his call was nothing but a red herring.) One needs to consider all of the peculiar Bush connections to the circle around Oswald, to the CIA at that time, to people in the motorcade, to the fact that Bush himself was in Dallas that day, as documented in multiple chapters in Family of Secrets. Certainly, any thorough investigation could have potentially uncovered those connections, and so it would not be surprising that his peculiar "confidential call" to the FBI would demonstrate, should it be necessary and should the document ever see the light of day, that he was interested only in doing the right thing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In Chapter 4 you point out that George H. W. Bush phoned the FBI in Houston a few hours after JFK was assassinated to report that James Parrott had "been talking of killing the president". You suggest on page 56 that the reason for this call to the FBI might have been to establish in "government investigative files" that at the time of the assassination he was in Tyler, Texas. If that is the case, why would he link it to the assassination of JFK?

His call establishes two pieces of information in confidential government files: that he was in Tyler, Texas, around the time of the assassination, but also that he was going out of his way to be helpful to assassination investigators (though as we can see, he was not actually being helpful at all, and his call was nothing but a red herring.) One needs to consider all of the peculiar Bush connections to the circle around Oswald, to the CIA at that time, to people in the motorcade, to the fact that Bush himself was in Dallas that day, as documented in multiple chapters in Family of Secrets. Certainly, any thorough investigation could have potentially uncovered those connections, and so it would not be surprising that his peculiar "confidential call" to the FBI would demonstrate, should it be necessary and should the document ever see the light of day, that he was interested only in doing the right thing.

Wait a minute. We have the Big Picture down pretty good. But what about the peculiar details?

Who was James Milton Parrott. What do we know about him besides him leaving the US Air Force for psychological reasons, enrolling at U. Houston, enlisting in the "Young Republicans," who today would be considered a terrorist organization considering all the dirty tricks that have been committed by their adhearants, and threatening the life of the President more than once, on the record, and calling attention to himself by picketing Dean Rusk when he visited the Rice Hotel, and stimulating Bush to call the FBI to warn them about this guy - some say he did this before the assassination - and today is said to be a Republican Leader in Harris County?

I mean, who is James M. Parrott? Was he really a GOP Dirty Trickster who Bush dropped a dime on?

Is he related to Thomas Parrott, the assistant to MacNamara and Gen. Taylor, who sat in on all the Cuban Coordinating Committee meetings that formed government policy on covert operations against Cuba?

But it's not nothing.

And if he is on record as saying, after the assassintion took place, that he was going to Dallas on 11/22/63 and would be staying that night at the Sheritan, then he is not at Dealey Plaza and that is not him in photos standing in front of the TSBD. Is that right?

BK

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In Chapter 4 you point out that George H. W. Bush phoned the FBI in Houston a few hours after JFK was assassinated to report that James Parrott had "been talking of killing the president". You suggest on page 56 that the reason for this call to the FBI might have been to establish in "government investigative files" that at the time of the assassination he was in Tyler, Texas. If that is the case, why would he link it to the assassination of JFK?

His call establishes two pieces of information in confidential government files: that he was in Tyler, Texas, around the time of the assassination, but also that he was going out of his way to be helpful to assassination investigators (though as we can see, he was not actually being helpful at all, and his call was nothing but a red herring.) One needs to consider all of the peculiar Bush connections to the circle around Oswald, to the CIA at that time, to people in the motorcade, to the fact that Bush himself was in Dallas that day, as documented in multiple chapters in Family of Secrets. Certainly, any thorough investigation could have potentially uncovered those connections, and so it would not be surprising that his peculiar "confidential call" to the FBI would demonstrate, should it be necessary and should the document ever see the light of day, that he was interested only in doing the right thing.

Wait a minute. We have the Big Picture down pretty good. But what about the peculiar details?

Who was James Milton Parrott. What do we know about him besides him leaving the US Air Force for psychological reasons, enrolling at U. Houston, enlisting in the "Young Republicans," who today would be considered a terrorist organization considering all the dirty tricks that have been committed by their adhearants, and threatening the life of the President more than once, on the record, and calling attention to himself by picketing Dean Rusk when he visited the Rice Hotel, and stimulating Bush to call the FBI to warn them about this guy - some say he did this before the assassination - and today is said to be a Republican Leader in Harris County?

I mean, who is James M. Parrott? Was he really a GOP Dirty Trickster who Bush dropped a dime on?

Is he related to Thomas Parrott, the assistant to MacNamara and Gen. Taylor, who sat in on all the Cuban Coordinating Committee meetings that formed government policy on covert operations against Cuba?

But it's not nothing.

And if he is on record as saying, after the assassintion took place, that he was going to Dallas on 11/22/63 and would be staying that night at the Sheritan, then he is not at Dealey Plaza and that is not him in photos standing in front of the TSBD. Is that right?

BK

I researched that, and found no apparent connection between James Parrott and Thomas Parrott. As for Bush's statement that he was going to Dallas, I address the particulars of that in Family of Secrets--suggest you check it out. On the photo at the TSBD, it is impossible to say with certainty.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now

×
×
  • Create New...