Russ Baker: Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty

[William Kelly]

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.

Thanks Russ,

Will do.

BK

[William Kelly]

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.

Thanks Russ,

Will do.

BK

Oh, And Russ,

Did you get a make on the guy who gave a 11/22/63 alibi for Parrott?

Kearnsky? Reynolds - 233 Red Ripple Road?

Said he stopped by to visit Parrott at his house that afternoon.

Thanks,

BK

[Russ Baker]

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.

Thanks Russ,

Will do.

BK

Oh, And Russ,

Did you get a make on the guy who gave a 11/22/63 alibi for Parrott?

Kearnsky? Reynolds - 233 Red Ripple Road?

Said he stopped by to visit Parrott at his house that afternoon.

Thanks,

BK

Bill, I devote an entire chapter of Family of Secrets to this issue, with an exclusive interview with Kearney Reynolds. I must say that I am a little surprised by how many people on this forum like to ask questions of authors but don't want to spring for a copy of the book itself! We cannot do this sort of very difficult and time-consuming research if the very people who are most interested in the topic will not support our work.

[William Kelly]

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.

Thanks Russ,

Will do.

BK

Oh, And Russ,

Did you get a make on the guy who gave a 11/22/63 alibi for Parrott?

Kearnsky? Reynolds - 233 Red Ripple Road?

Said he stopped by to visit Parrott at his house that afternoon.

Thanks,

BK

Bill, I devote an entire chapter of Family of Secrets to this issue, with an exclusive interview with Kearney Reynolds. I must say that I am a little surprised by how many people on this forum like to ask questions of authors but don't want to spring for a copy of the book itself! We cannot do this sort of very difficult and time-consuming research if the very people who are most interested in the topic will not support our work.

It's on order Russ. Thanks for all you do.

Will get back to you after I read it.

So far I've sprung for $100 for three books by Waldron, but he would't stick around to answer my questions.

Thanks for sticking around,

BK

Edited April 19, 2009 by William Kelly

[John Simkin]

On page 16 of your book, Family of Secrets, you point out that Robert Crowley "managed the CIA relations with cooperative multinational corporations like Ford Motor Company and International Telephone and Telegraph". You then point out that Crowley told Joe Trento that he sometimes used businessmen like George Bush to work for the CIA. "It was much easier to simply set someone up in business like Bush and let him take orders."

Crowley was a major source for Joe Trento’s Secret History of the CIA (2001). Crowley was also a source for other journalists working on books on the CIA. In "Molehunt: The Secret Search for Traitors that shattered the CIA (1992). He argued that Crowley was "a man of great wisdom". One of the problems of using CIA insiders is that it enables the agency to manage what is disclosed. Journalists who have used Crowley as a source never reveal details of his activities in the CIA.

I have recently found several documents that reveal that Crowley played an important role in the attempts to overthrow Fidel Castro in the early 1960s. This includes his involvement with characters like Frank Sturgis and Operation 40. I don’t suppose you found any evidence that the connection between Crowley and Bush was Cuba? Crowley was also deeply involved in the efforts by the U.S. to overthrow the elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile.

[Russ Baker]

On page 16 of your book, Family of Secrets, you point out that Robert Crowley "managed the CIA relations with cooperative multinational corporations like Ford Motor Company and International Telephone and Telegraph". You then point out that Crowley told Joe Trento that he sometimes used businessmen like George Bush to work for the CIA. "It was much easier to simply set someone up in business like Bush and let him take orders."

Crowley was a major source for Joe Trento’s Secret History of the CIA (2001). Crowley was also a source for other journalists working on books on the CIA. In "Molehunt: The Secret Search for Traitors that shattered the CIA (1992). He argued that Crowley was "a man of great wisdom". One of the problems of using CIA insiders is that it enables the agency to manage what is disclosed. Journalists who have used Crowley as a source never reveal details of his activities in the CIA.

I have recently found several documents that reveal that Crowley played an important role in the attempts to overthrow Fidel Castro in the early 1960s. This includes his involvement with characters like Frank Sturgis and Operation 40. I don’t suppose you found any evidence that the connection between Crowley and Bush was Cuba? Crowley was also deeply involved in the efforts by the U.S. to overthrow the elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile.

I have not had the opportunity to look extensively into the nature of the Crowley-Bush relationship. However, I take everything that former high-ranking Agency people with a grain of salt. Often, what they reveal is a case of what in tradecraft is called a "limited hangout," in which they provide nominally accurate revelations as cover for even more disturbing and important facts. I cannot believe that people like Crowley could talk to journalists as he did without some kind of approval. So, yes, it is certainly possible that he was being essentially truthful in revealing some kind of operational connection with George HW Bush while not revealing the true extent of it. In any case, I would be interested in hearing directly (not via bulletin board) from anyone who has documents or other information pertaining to this relationship. I can be contacted via this site or at www.familyofsecrets.com .

[John Simkin]

On page 132 of Family of Secrets you quote Pat Holloway as saying that he overheard LBJ saying on the phone, just minutes after the assassination of JFK: “Oh, I gotta get rid of my goddam Halliburton stock”.

It seems highly significant to me that probably the largest shareholder of Halliburton in 1963 was George Rufus Brown (he had sold Brown & Root to Halliburton). George and Herman Brown (he died in 1962) had made a fortune since they had become LBJ’s main financial sponsor in the early 1930s.

Have you any ideas why he was so concerned with his connections to Halliburton at this time?

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

Today I met with Russ Baker and talked with him about Family of Secrets. Interstingly he mentioned that Dan Rather had agreed to endorse and blurb the paperback edition that is coming out in October. Interesting person to get an endoresment from. Is Rather becoming more open to exploring certain issues?

Edited June 26, 2009 by Nathaniel Heidenheimer

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

Finally had a moment this weekend to reread parts of Family of Secrets. It holds up, pretty well I'd say. The chapter on Bush and de Mohrenschildt is stunning. Remarkable for the way it blends personal detail with wider corporate implications. I typed this, which includes one small part of the brilliant chapter 5. It may be useful for those who have not seen this book yet.

This book is an absolute must read.

----------

“In an era dominated by corporate journalism and an ideological right-wing media, Russ Baker’s work stands out for its fierce independence, fact-based reporting, and concern for what matters most to our democracy…A lot of us look to Russ to tell us what we didn’t know.” —Bill Moyers, author and host, Bill Moyers’ Journal (PBS)

There is probably nobody more important or laboriously multi-faceted character in all of Kennedy assassination literature than George de Mohrenschildt, the White Russian aristocrat, who met the Oswalds in Dallas, after their return form the USSR, and proceeded to introduce them to a key group of very highly connected oil and intelligence volk in the booming city's ever more influential petroleum circle. It was de Mohrenschildt who introduced to the Oswalds to the Paines, who put up Marina Oswald and her children, and who took such strange and detailed interest in the life of a professed "Marxist" defector to the Soviet Union's repatriation to the single most rightwing metropolis on the face of the earth. (Later it would be discovered that the both Paines had an immediate family history that was inseparable from US intelligence history.)

For much more on the fascinating Ruth Hyde Paine see http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKpaine.htm

(SEE SPARTACUS THREAD ON DE MOHRENSCHILDT FOR MORE ON THIS KEYSTONE FIGURE. THE GREAT THING ABOUT THE SPARTACUS THREADS ARE THE NUMEROUS DIFFERENT SOURCES, WHICH ARE DIRECTLY EXCERPTED AT THE BOTTOM OF EACH PATE. INVALUABLE RESOURCE, PROVIDED BY JOHN SIMKIN http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKdemohrenschildt.htm )

Russ Baker, in his new book Family of Secrets, has discovered a wealth of incredible detail that connects the de Mohrenschildt family with the Bush family on many different levels long before Oswald's #1 CIA handler ever met the returning marine and his Russian wife in Dallas in 1962. Baker traces these direct, high level intelligence and economic relations between the families of Bush and de Mohrenschildt right back to 1917 and shows that they also involved those at the summit of US diplomacy, including, Wilson's Secretary of State Lansing, Allen Dulles, and key Houston Anglophile (and Petrophile) Colonel Edward House, as well as the ancestors

of Bush Uber-aid, James A. Baker III.These ties are described in great detail, were not passing in nature, and are between five and seven closer than the "six degrees" type with which we have been encouraged to glaze over political history in recent years.

Then, barely into his new job as director of the CIA in 1976-- a job that he claimed was his first work for the Agency, but which is proven blatantly false by this book-- George H.W. Bush received this desperate plea for help from his old personal and family acquaintance:

Maybe you will be able to bring a solution into the hopeless

situation I find myself in. My wife and I find ourselves sur-

rounded by some vigilantes; our phone bugged; and we are

being followed everywhere. Either FBI is involved in this or

they do not want to accept my complaints. We are driven to

insanity by this situation... I tried to write, stupidly and un-

successfully , about Lee H. Oswald and must have angered

people... Could you do something to remove this net around

us? THis will be my last request for help and I will not annoy

you any more.

The writer signed himself "G. de Mohrenschildt."(1) p. 67.

The CIA assumed the latter writer to be a crank, Just to be sure, however, they asked their boss: did he by any chance know a man named de Mohrenschildt?

Bush Responded by Memo, seemingly, self-typed: "I do know this man DeMohrenschildt. I first men [sic] him in the early 40'3 [sic]. He was an uncle to my Andover roommate. Later he surfaced in Dallas (50's maybe)... Then he surfaced when Oswald shot to prominence. He knew Oswald before the assassination of Pres. Kennedy. I don't recall his role in all this."

Half a year later, de Mohrenschildt was dead. It was one of the most suspicious deaths in a very long list associated with the Kennedy assassination and its investigation. The death occurred just two days before de Mohrenschildt was scheduled to testify before the House Select Committee on Assassinations, and only around an hour after an interview with a journalist employed by Time-Life, the single most intelligence connected media company in US history, and a company present at nearly every crucial turn of the investigations long history-- including the purchase and storage of the Zapruder film by top Psychological Warfare expert and Henry Luce's Far Right hand, C.D. Jackson (see Spartacus thread). Here is more from Russ Baker's incredible book. While it is very difficult to capture how the pieces fit together in a book filled with such byzantine detail-- yet also impeccable documentation-- this passage is useful in showing that the assassination was much more than a case of spies and individuals disconnected form clear policy forks in the road. On the contrary, vast structures of political and economic power were involved in such a way as to constantly remind us of the single, vulgar reality: when Allan Dulles plaid midwife to the CIA, the manger was Wall Street.

_____________________________

Cuba Si, Cuba No

During the 1950's, as petroleum reserves in the Southwest declined, oilmen there were looking to the southern hemisphere for new opportunities. George de Mohrenschildt, who always seemed to move at the behest of people of higher rank than himself, turned to Cuba. He later told the Warren Commission that he left the Buckley's [as in William F.] Pantepec Oil back in 1946 after a falling-out with a company vice president. Yet by 1950 he was working with his former boss, Pantepec president Warren Smith, on the latter's new firm called the Cuban-Venezuelan Oil Voting Trust Company (CVOVT). In passing, de Mohrenschildt mentioned to the commission that the CVOVT had managed to obtain leases covering nearly half of Cuba. He appears to have been telling the truth, but Warren Commission counsel Albert E. Jenner Jr. did not find this remarkable fact interesting. (21)

This showed that de Mohrenschildt was no rogue operator or bohemian-- as Jenner repeatedly sought to characterize him. Rather he was at the center of a major corporate effort, involving many of America's largest institutions. Through connections in the Batista regime, the CVOVT had managed to corner exclusive exploration rights to millions of acres on the island. Like all foreign businesses operating in Cuba, it had to work through the dictator's American intermediaries, notably, the mobster Meyer Lansky, who was de facto representative of American "interests" on the island(22).

The CVOVT never amounted to much besides promising reports and modest production(23) Still it became a Wall Street darling. Though now almost completely forgotten, on many days in the mid-1950's, it was one of the four or five most actively traded issue on the American Stock Exchange. By November 30, 1956, the New York Times had this announcement:

The Cuban Stanolind Oil Company, an affiliate of the Standard Oil

Company (Indiana), has signed an agreement with the Cuban Ven-

ezuaelan Oil Voting Trust and Trans-Cuba Oil Company for the

development of an additional 3,000,000 acres in Cuba. This is in

addition to the original agreement covering 12,000,000, acres.

Stanolind has agreed to start drilling within 120 days and maintain

a one-rig continuous drilling program [for] three years (24)

This was apparently a big deal for companies like Stanolind, which had no foreign production at all until it went into Cuba. Affording to its filing, it was formed in Havana in 1950 "to assure continuity of management and stability of policy for shareholders of twenty-four oil companies in South America" (25) That is it was some kind of holding company with a focus on "Stability" in Latin American countries, which could reasonably be assumed to refer to creating conditions of political stability favorable to the exploration activities.

The Empire Trust Company, a New York-based bastion of power and wealth, appears to have played a key role in the financing of the Cuban venture. A short item in the New York Times of May 14, 1956, noted:

Election of Charles LEslie Rice, a vice president of the Empire

Trust Company of New York, as a voting trustee of the Cuban-

Venezuelan Oil Voting Trust, was announced over the week-end.

Empire Trust's John Loeb had a network of associates that amounted to "something very like a private CIA," wrote Stephen Birmingham in Our Crowd: The Great Jewish Families of

New York.(26) Empire worked hard to protect its foreign investments and especially its stake in the defense contractor General Dynamics. Empire entrusted its affairs in Texas to Baker Botts, the law firm of James Baker's family(27) Besides Rice, another Empire Trust director was Lewis MacNaughton, a Dresser Industries board member from 1959 to 1967.

[Dresser industries, as Baker shows earlier in the book, was an oil drilling equipment company with global intelligence connections that in some ways remind one of Howard Hughes Hughes Tool Co. The company connected the Harriman, Bush, Walker and Mallon families, and was a key platform for both H.W. Bush's political career in Taxes and, in the more literal sense, for CIA operations against Fidel Castro's Cuba in the late 1950's and the early (but how late??) 1960s --N.H.]

MacNaughton was the employer of George Bouhe, the Russian emigre who would later introduce George de Mohrenschildt to Lee Harvey Oswald. Perhaps the most curious of the Empire Trust figures was Jack Crichton, a longtime company vice president who joined Empire in August 1953 and remained through 1962. (28)

Crichton, who had been hired soon after leaving the military in 1946 by oil industry wunderkind Everette DeGolyer, quickly, quickly became a go-to guy for numerous powerful interests seeking a foothold in the energy arena. He started and ran a baffling array of companies, which tended to change names frequently. These operated largely bellow the radar, and fronted for some of North America's biggest names, including the Bronfmans (Seagram's liquor), the Du Ponts, and the Kuhn-Loeb family of financiers. According to his former lawyer Crichton traveled to the Middle East on oil-related intelligence business. On behalf of prominent interests, he was involved with George de Mohrenschildt in his oil exploration venture in Pre-Castro Cuba. In a 2001 oral history, Crichton volunteered that he was a friend of George de Mohrenschildt's: "I liked George. He was a nice guy." (29)

By 1956, in addition to his other duties, Crichton started a military intelligence reserve unit on the side. (30) On the day of Kennedy's assassination, as will be elaborated upon in Chapter 7, he would arrange for a member of the Dallas Russian Community to rush to Marina Oswald's side and provide translations for investigators--which were far from literal translations of her Russian words and had the effect of implicating her husband in Kennedy's death. Shortly after the assassination, Crichton would become the GOP nominee for governor of Texas in a race against the incumbent John Connally, who had recovered from his wounds of November 22. On the same ticker was the Republican nominee for the United States Senate, Poppy Bush. Unfortunately for the rich and powerful behind the Cuban oil venture in the 19560s, just as the possibility of extracting vast wealth from that small island drew increasing interest from Wall Street, Fidel Castro's revolution was gaining strength. At the same time, what look to have been intelligence operations under oil industry cover were moving into position, as Poppy Bush began moving his rigs to Howard Hughes's Cay Sal Bank in the Bahamas.

On January 1, 1959, Fulgencio Batista fled Cuba, and the next day Casto's Army marched into Havana.

On November 22, 1959, the New York Times reported that the new Cuban government had approved a law that would reduce the size of private companies. These claims were now limited to twenty thousand acres, a major setback for companies such as CVOVT, with its fifteen million acres. (31).

According to the Times, big foreign oil companies had already spent more than thirty million dollars looking for oil over the preceding twelve years. The article cited petroleum industry sources speculating that nationalization of the refining industry was soon to come. The government also imposed a 60 per cent royalty on oil production believed to be the highest anywhere. Standard Oil of New Jersey had, according to the article invested thirty-five million dollars in a Cuban refinery, and other companies had invested comparable sums. (32)

Among other things, the new law put an end to the go-go days of the Cuban-Venezuelan Oil Voting Trust stock. That story was summed up neatly in William A. Doyle's syndicated advice column, the Daily Investor," on August 14, 1961:

Q.I bought some shares of Cuban-Venezuelan Oil Voting Trust a couple years ago.

This stock was listed on the American Stock Exchange but I never see it quoted

there any more. What's the trouble?

A. The trouble is spelled C-a-s-t-r-o.When that bearded dictator took over the

government in Cuba, he started kicking American investors smack in the pocket-

book. The Cuban-Venezuelan Oil Voting Trust story is somewhat involved. But

its chief cause of grief came when the Communist-oriented Cuban government

refused to explore its concession to explore for oil. That just about wrecked this

outfit. The stock's price dropped. You won't find the shares quoted on the

American Stock Exchange, because this stock was de-listed from that exchange,

as of Dec. 1, 1960. Technically, it is still possible to buy and sell these shares in

the over-the-counter market. But you'll be lucky if you can get 10 cents a share.(33)

Brown Brothers Harriman [very very close Bush-Malon ties discussed earlier in book] also had a stake in Cuban affairs that went back at least to the 1920's. ITs affiliate, the Punta Alegre Sugar Corporation, controlled more than two hundred thousand acres in the province of Cameguey (34). Officials of the firm served on the board of Punta Alegre up to the moment that Castro expropriated its land-- and even afterward, as the sugar company began moving its remaining assets to the United States.

The CIA's Allen Dulles responded quickly to developments on the island. He created the Cuban Task Force, with teams in charge of clandestine operations, psychological warfare, and economic and diplomatic pressure. Out of these emerged Operation 40, an elite group of Cuban exiles who, after specialized training, were to infiltrate Cuba and deal a mortal blow to the revolution, including the assassination of its principal leaders.

The chief of the task force was Tracy Barnes, a Yale graduate and Dulles's wartime OSS comrade who was related to the Rockefeller clan by marriage. More than a decade earlier, Barnes's first CIA job had been as deputy director of the Psychological Strategy Board, a little-known entity that explored everything from the use of psychotropic drugs as truth serum to the possibility of engineering unwitting assassins, i.e. Manchurian Candidates. Later, he worked on the successful 1954 operation to overthrow the democratically elected president of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz. Barnes had received propaganda support form David Atlee Phillips and E. Howard Hunt, including the distribution of faked photographs

purporting to show the mutilated bodies of Arbenz opponents.

Phillips and Hunt would be hounded by allegations that they had been present in Dallas on November 22, 1963. Both men consistently denied it. But according to his son St. John Hunt, E. Howard began confessing knowledge of a plot against Kennedy near the end of his life and named Phillips as one of the participants.(35)

Hunt and Phillips attended the first meeting of the Cuba Task Force, held January 18, 1960 in Barnes office. Barnes spoke at length on the objectives. He explained that Air Force General Charles Cabell, a Texan (and brother of Dallas's mayor), would be in charge of air cover for an invasion, and that VIce President Richard Nixon, whose brief included some national security areas, was the administration's Cuba "case officer."

In his memoirs, former Cuban intelligence official Fabian Escalante asserted that Nixon had met with an important group of Texas businessmen to arrange outside funding for the operation. Escalente, whose service was vaunted for its U.S. spy network, claimed that the Texas group was headed by George H.W. Bush and Jack Crichton. Escalente's assertion cannot be easily dismissed: Crichton's role in covert operations, about which extensive new information is provided in chapter 7 was little understood at the time Escalante published his memoirs. (36)

In March 1960, the Eisenhower administration signed off on a plan to equip and train Cuban exiles, and drills soon began in Florida and Guatemala. One of Dulles's top three aides, the covert operations chief Richard M. Bissell (Yale '32), was made director. Around this time, George de Mohrenschildt happened to take a business trip to Mexico City , where the CIA station was deeply involved in the coming attractions.

By the fall of 1962, when de Mohrehschildt was devoting much of his time to squiring Lee Harvey Oswald, he had gained entree to the creme de la creme of the petroleum world. One longtime buddy of his and of Poppy Bush's, offshore drilling expert George Kitchel, would tell the FBI in 1964 that de Mohrenschildt counted among his good fiends the oil tycoons Clint Murchison, H.L. Hunt, John Mecom, and Sid Richardson. Other commission testimony revealed that in the couple of years prior to the Kennedy assassination, de Mohrenschildt had traveled frequently from Dallas to Houston, where he visited with figures such as George Brown of Brown and Root, the construction and military contracting giant that helped launch LBJ's career, and Jean de Menil of Schlumberger, the huge oil services firm.

Several of these men had even sent de Mohrenschild abroad on business; one could be forgiven for wondering if these trips were in fact what the CIA calls "commercial cover." George Brown had dispatched him to Mexico, where his mission seemed to be heading off a Mexican government oil deal with the Soviet deputy premier Anastas Mikoyan, who arrived at the same time. (37) Murchison dispatched him to Haiti on several occasions. In 1958, he went to Yugoslavia on what was said to be business for Mecom--whose foundation, the San Jacinto Fund, was later identified as a CIA funding conduit.

The Warren Commission knew at least pieces of all this. Yet in 1964, after two and a half days of testimony by George de Mohrenschildt and his wife Jeanne, the commission would conclude that George was essentially an eccentric if well-connceted figure whose life encompassed a series of strange coincidences. (Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, The Powerful Forces That Put It Into the White House, and What Their Influence Means For America) p. 79-84)

Edited October 18, 2009 by Nathaniel Heidenheimer

[Guest Tom Scully]

Finally had a moment this weekend to reread parts of Family of Secrets. It holds up, pretty well I'd say. The chapter on Bush and de Mohrenschildt is stunning. Remarkable for the way it blends personal detail with wider corporate implications. I typed this, which includes one small part of the brilliant chapter 5. It may be useful for those who have not seen this book yet.

This book is an absolute must read.

----------

.....Cuba Si, Cuba No

During the 1950's, as petroleum reserves in the Southwest declined, oilmen there were looking to the southern hemisphere for new opportunities. George de Mohrenschildt, who always seemed to move at the behest of people of higher rank than himself, turned to Cuba. He later told the Warren Commission that he left the Buckley's [as in William F.] Pantepec Oil back in 1946 after a falling-out with a company vice president. Yet by 1950 he was working with his former boss, Pantepec president Warren Smith, on the latter's new firm called the Cuban-Venezuelan Oil Voting Trust Company (CVOVT). In passing, de Mohrenschildt mentioned to the commission that the CVOVT had managed to obtain leases covering nearly half of Cuba. He appears to have been telling the truth, but Warren Commission counsel Albert E. Jenner Jr. did not find this remarkable fact interesting. (21)

This showed that de Mohrenschildt was no rogue operator or bohemian-- as Jenner repeatedly sought to characterize him. Rather he was at the center of a major corporate effort, involving many of America's largest institutions. Through connections in the Batista regime, the CVOVT had managed to corner exclusive exploration rights to millions of acres on the island. Like all foreign businesses operating in Cuba, it had to work through the dictator's American intermediaries, notably, the mobster Meyer Lansky, who was de facto representative of American "interests" on the island(22).

The CVOVT never amounted to much besides promising reports and modest production(23) Still it became a Wall Street darling. Though now almost completely forgotten, on many days in the mid-1950's, it was one of the four or five most actively traded issue on the American Stock Exchange. By November 30, 1956, the New York Times had this announcement:

The Cuban Stanolind Oil Company, an affiliate of the Standard Oil

Company (Indiana), has signed an agreement with the Cuban Ven-

ezuaelan Oil Voting Trust and Trans-Cuba Oil Company for the

development of an additional 3,000,000 acres in Cuba. This is in

addition to the original agreement covering 12,000,000, acres.

Stanolind has agreed to start drilling within 120 days and maintain

a one-rig continuous drilling program [for] three years (24)

This was apparently a big deal for companies like Stanolind, which had no foreign production at all until it went into Cuba. Affording to its filing, it was formed in Havana in 1950 "to assure continuity of management and stability of policy for shareholders of twenty-four oil companies in South America" (25) That is it was some kind of holding company with a focus on "Stability" in Latin American countries, which could reasonably be assumed to refer to creating conditions of political stability favorable to the exploration activities.

The Empire Trust Company, a New York-based bastion of power and wealth, appears to have played a key role in the financing of the Cuban venture. A short item in the New York Times of May 14, 1956, noted:

Election of Charles LEslie Rice, a vice president of the Empire

Trust Company of New York, as a voting trustee of the Cuban-

Venezuelan Oil Voting Trust, was announced over the week-end.

Empire Trust's John Loeb had a network of associates that amounted to "something very like a private CIA," wrote Stephen Birmingham in Our Crowd: The Great Jewish Families of

New York.(26) Empire worked hard to protect its foreign investments and especially its stake in the defense contractor General Dynamics. Empire entrusted its affairs in Texas to Baker Botts, the law firm of James Baker's family(27) Besides Rice, another Empire Trust director was Lewis MacNaughton, a Dresser Industries board member from 1959 to 1967.

[Dresser industries, as Baker shows earlier in the book, was an oil drilling equipment company with global intelligence connections that in some ways remind one of Howard Hughes Hughes Tool Co. The company connected the Harriman, Bush, Walker and Mallon families, and was a key platform for both H.W. Bush's political career in Taxes and, in the more literal sense, for CIA operations against Fidel Castro's Cuba in the late 1950's and the early (but how late??) 1960s --N.H.]

MacNaughton was the employer of George Bouhe, the Russian emigre who would later introduce George de Mohrenschildt to Lee Harvey Oswald. Perhaps the most curious of the Empire Trust figures was Jack Crichton, a longtime company vice president who joined Empire in August 1953 and remained through 1962. (28)

Crichton, who had been hired soon after leaving the military in 1946 by oil industry wunderkind Everette DeGolyer, quickly, quickly became a go-to guy for numerous powerful interests seeking a foothold in the energy arena. He started and ran a baffling array of companies, which tended to change names frequently. These operated largely bellow the radar, and fronted for some of North America's biggest names, including the Bronfmans (Seagram's liquor), the Du Ponts, and the Kuhn-Loeb family of financiers. According to his former lawyer Crichton traveled to the Middle East on oil-related intelligence business. On behalf of prominent interests, he was involved with George de Mohrenschildt in his oil exploration venture in Pre-Castro Cuba. In a 2001 oral history, Crichton volunteered that he was a friend of George de Mohrenschildt's: "I liked George. He was a nice guy." (29)

By 1956, in addition to his other duties, Crichton started a military intelligence reserve unit on the side. (30) On the day of Kennedy's assassination, as will be elaborated upon in Chapter 7, he would arrange for a member of the Dallas Russian Community to rush to Marina Oswald's side and provide translations for investigators--which were far from literal translations of her Russian words and had the effect of implicating her husband in Kennedy's death. Shortly after the assassination, Crichton would become the GOP nominee for governor of Texas in a race against the incumbent John Connally, who had recovered from his wounds of November 22. On the same ticker was the Republican nominee for the United States Senate, Poppy Bush. Unfortunately for the rich and powerful behind the Cuban oil venture in the 19560s, just as the possibility of extracting vast wealth from that small island drew increasing interest from Wall Street, Fidel Castro's revolution was gaining strength. At the same time, what look to have been intelligence operations under oil industry cover were moving into position, as Poppy Bush began moving his rigs to Howard Hughes's Cay Sal Bank in the Bahamas.

On January 1, 1959, Fulgencio Batista fled Cuba, and the next day Casto's Army marched into Havana.

On November 22, 1959, the New York Times reported that the new Cuban government had approved a law that would reduce the size of private companies. These claims were now limited to twenty thousand acres, a major setback for companies such as CVOVT, with its fifteen million acres. (31).

According to the Times, big foreign oil companies had already spent more than thirty million dollars looking for oil over the preceding twelve years. The article cited petroleum industry sources speculating that nationalization of the refining industry was soon to come. The government also imposed a 60 per cent royalty on oil production believed to be the highest anywhere. Standard Oil of New Jersey had, according to the article invested thirty-five million dollars in a Cuban refinery, and other companies had invested comparable sums. (32) .......

Robert Howard's March 8, 2009 post:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.ph...&pid=163750

....Do you ever get the feeling that there are a lot of threads on the forum, that if the pertinent sections could be added together in a coherent manner we might discover how all of these persons intertwined in 1963?

Having said that, I am afraid my last post was a thread-killer and I apologize for the post if that were the case....

In an attempt to make amends, for that and especially for Linda Minor and Tom Scully, I wanted to suggest a perusal of Possible Discovery of an Automobile Used in the JFK Assassination, by Richard Bartholomew, if they have not already.

I remember that the author was posting on the Forum at one time, and was treated in a real crappy manner, to the point that I was embarrassed, memory escapes me as to who it was busting his chops but it was really undeserved in my opinion, and unlike some fairly well known persons he was not trying to sell a book or advocating that any particular ethnic or religious group Killed Kennedy.

I have posted a section of how a portion of his article ties in, in my opinion with various individuals mentioned on this thread...beginning as follows

"There is also a third scenario which, as we have seen, brings together the Miami Rambler, the Dealey Plaza Rambler, Wing's Rambler, Ruth Paine, Jack Ruby, and Oswald. In his manuscript, Peter Dale Scott mentions Jesus Fernandez Hernandez, the leaseholder of Hernando's Hideaway. He says he is a leader of the "30th of November Movement (founded by Dubois' old underground contact David Salvador)...."532 That is why Kensington found the possible connection between C.B. Smith and Jules Dubois interesting.

Jose M. Bosch Lamarque, the director of de Mohrenschildt's Cuban-Venezuelan Oil Trust, was Castro's chief contact with Dubois.533 Bosch Lamarque, Barletta, and de la Camara (all on de Mohrenschildt's board) are collectively tied to the Castro assassination attempt involving the Odios, General Motors, Batista, Trujillo, and the Lake Pontchartrain training camp -- the camp where Bringuier, Hall, Hemming, Victor Espinosa Hernandez ("A"), and Lauchli are all tied together.....

http://books.google.com/books?ei=N1DcSu3kN...nG=Search+Books

And we are all mortal: new evidence and analysis in the John F. Kennedy ...‎ -

by George Michael Evica - Biography & Autobiography - 465 pages

page 293

In 1940-41, the leading petrochemical companies of America had cartel

arrangements with German firms supporting the Nazi German government at the

onset of World War Il, and were in active opposition to fighting Hitler.

The Truman Committee investigation, for example, exposed in detail the I.G. Farben- Rockefeller Standard Oil agreement

which Congress believed had helped hobble American war preparedness. And as late as 1973 the Phillipines

subsidiary of Rockefeller's Exxon Corporation refused oil sales to the United States Navy

at Subic Bay, in effect supporting the Arab oil boycott.

In the 1950s, de Mohrenschildt had close Mexican government ties, and was a

reputed intimate of Mexican President Miguel Aleman.

Later in 1961, de Mohrenschildt made a tour of the oil-rich southern Mexican states,

probably on a petrochemical intelligence assignment, and wound up in Guatemala City just in time

for the Bay of Pigs staging, about which he would submit a report to the American government.

George de Mohrenschildt's fourth wife, born in China of White Russian parents (she was allegedly sympathetic to the

Maoist revolutionary movement but also bitter toward it because the Chinese Communists executed her father),

had one brother who worked for the CIA, the other for Howard Hughes.

After a government- obtained job in Tito's Yugoslavia for oil interests with American government ties,

de Mohrenschildt was debriefed at length in several meetings by a Dallas CIA agent,

and probably provided both petrochemical and other intelligence. George de Mohrenschildt was in contact with the Dallas

Agency employee, J. Dalton Moore, whom de Mohrenschildt admitted consulting a number of times

about Lee Harvey Oswald. But according to the Baron, he "thought" Moore was a Bureau agent.

When the de Mohrenschildts returned from their mexican- Panama

page 294 (restricted)

page 295

The White Baron had continuing connections to the same groups which supplied,

funded, and supported the alliance of anti-Castro groups which stood to gain from the

fall of Cuba and the further exploitation of the Caribbean and the Bahamas.

That de Mohrenschildt looked away from Cuba and toward Haiti was no problem;

that foresight made him a part of the larger context of the assassination, and gave meaning, I think, to his relationship with Oswald.

With members of the Batista (Fallal family, he helped to establish the Cuba-

Venezuela Oil Trust Co.;

it was less important that a Pantipac Oil Company agent who was involved in that operation came from an

exploitation company owned by the Buckley family, and that through the Buckleys,

de Mohrenschildt could be indirectly connected to Manuel Artime and E.

Howard Hunt; rather with the Baron's philosophy and motivation, it would be inevitable he

would work with individuals and groups having such connections.

In fact, his earlier connections with the Batista Falla family would give

him theoretical access to the Lake Pontchartrain project itself. The other

Cuba-Venezuela Oil Trust Co. partner, Trujillo-associate Amadeo Barletta,

would give him the same kind of access, though less direct.

The goal of that de Mohrenschildt project was the exploitation of Cuba: "We owned about one-half

of the country under lease. When Castro took over, it was forfeited." Like the casino

operations represented by Lansky and Trafficante, de Mohrenschildt and his investment allies had enough motive to want Cuba to be

regained for exploitation, and, in the process, be rid of a model for other countries which might begin to resist such exploitation, legal or illegal.

George de Mohrenschildt was probably double- hatting through most of his career.

If we reverse the usual explanations of his Mexican- Central American-Guatemalan tour, the story makes at least as much sense: the Baron would then be

on a government intelligence assignment in Mexico, and on an exploitation tour in Guatemala, with the government report-

writing a rather thin cover (why would the United States want an intelligence report on the Bay of Pigs staging?)....

Some leads with associations in common to what is described above, and to each other. I"ll be interested to read what fellow members come up with:

Amadeo Barletta

John (Jack) M. Cates Jr. http://www.andover.edu/ABOUT/NOTABLEALUMNI...ages/1900s.aspx

Anthony A. Bernabei

Edited October 19, 2009 by Tom Scully

[Michael Hogan]

From Baker's whowhatwhy.com

The NY Times’ Ostrich Act on JFK Assassination Getting Old

by Russ Baker

July 27, 2011

http://whowhatwhy.com/2011/07/27/the-ny-times%E2%80%99-ostrich-act-on-jfk-assassination-getting-old/

[Guest Robert Morrow]

I agree with Russ Baker. In the year 2011, 48 years after the JFK assassination, the NY Times is still putting out the equivalent of 1950's Stalinist propaganda with regards to the 1963 Coup d'Etat. Their hand of cards is so weak that ONE DAY they will have to fold, quit bluffing and quit raising the ante. When? I don't know, but it can't last much longer.

The odds are overwhelming that Oswald was US intelligence with a public persona of a fake pro-Castro Marxist.

http://whowhatwhy.com/2011/07/27/the-ny-times%e2%80%99-ostrich-act-on-jfk-assassination-getting-old/print/

The NY Times’ Ostrich Act on JFK Assassination Getting Old

Posted By Russ Baker On July 27, 2011 @ 4:00 pm

Despite overwhelming contrary evidence, Oswald still labeled “leftist”

Nobody’s perfect. But it’s hard to think of anything as unworthy of a high-quality journalistic institution as the New York Times’ decades-long determination to never, ever, find any reason to question the original story spun by the Warren Commission on the JFK assassination. No matter how much new evidence has come out to the contrary.

It reminds a bit of the forever-blinkered character Sgt. Schultz on the old tv show Hogan’s Heroes (“I see NUUU-singg”—here’s a good clip [2], watch first minute of so…)

Ask any reporter, privately, what he or she thinks on this issue. Putting aside those who will demur on the basis of not having read widely on the topic (a surprisingly large number), you’ll find most believing that the “lone nut” or “Leftist loner” narratives about Oswald are utter junk. This would certainly apply in the New York Times newsroom.

And yet just the other day, there was this obituary [3]. It’s about Warren Leslie, a Dallas reporter who wrote a book on right-wing animosity toward JFK in Dallas at the time of the assassination. Yet, skip down to paragraph 17, and you have this contradictory little morsel:

the lone suspect in the assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald, far from being a right-winger, was an ardent leftist with Communist sympathies.

It’s just neatly slipped in as if it’s an uncontested fact, like the day’s sports scores.

Why take this angle? I called and e-mailed the obituary writer, Times staffer Dennis Hevesi, to ask him, but did not hear back by the time this was posted. In any case, it’s unfair to single Hevesi out, since this has been a long-standing Times policy on the matter.

Indeed, the obituary was typical of The Times’ way of handling the subject—every so often, run a kind of “curiosity” piece about some reporter or character, but then subtly undercut their findings.

Take the paper’s coverage of former Washington Post reporter and author Jefferson Morley’s ongoing research on Oswald, which again points toward Oswald not being a “leftist sympathizer” or Communist agent at all. The Times article [4], generally sympathetic toward Morley, actually began with the following disclaimer, which essentially contradicted the article’s thrust:

“Is the Central Intelligence Agency covering up some dark secret about the assassination of John F. Kennedy? Probably not.”

We have to wonder if that opening nullifier was dictated from on high. After all, though Scott Shane, who wrote that piece, called Morley’s reporting “meticulous,” for some reason the article never provides the name of Morley’s book (“Our Man in Mexico” [5]) nor provides a link to it, but quotes the main “no-conspiracy” author, and cites the name of his book instead.

There are literally hundreds of interesting, often excellent books on the JFK assassination. The vast majority of those written by serious researchers and scholars, and backed by extensive documentation and footnotes, come down on the side of Oswald having been recruited years earlier to do covert work for US government entities—with the “left-winger” story serving as constructed cover until his untimely demise.

I myself ran into the depth of the subterfuge and the institutional resistance to disturbing revelations while researching the Bush family’s past for my investigative history, Family of Secrets [6]. I learned, for example, of George H.W. Bush’s secret intelligence connections, which preceded his CIA directorship by several decades. I learned that the elder Bush had a lifelong friendship with a Dallas-based Russian émigré (anti-communist) oil and intelligence operative named George de Mohrenschildt—who himself was of intense if passing interest to the Warren Commission. And I learned that de Mohrenschildt had essentially guided Oswald for a good part of the year before the assassination.

There’s paperwork on all this, even a letter on the topic of Oswald from de Mohrenschildt to Bush, with Bush’s reply. Plus connections between de Mohrenschildt and right-wing Dallas moguls of exactly the sort that the late Mr. Leslie wrote about more generally.

Nothing on this Oswald-de Mohrenschildt-Bush connection has ever been mentioned by The Times (save a one-sentence pooh-pooh [7] in the paper by the late establishment historian Stephen Ambrose in 1992.) However, The Times did cover [8] de Mohrenschildt’s suicide, shortly after his final correspondence with Bush and shortly before he was expected to testify before the new House Select Committee on Assassinations [9].

Speaking of which, The Times rarely reminds readers that the House committee itself concluded [10] that Kennedy’s death was probably the result of an elaborate conspiracy (i.e., it was not a “loner” operation), but with no Soviet or Cuban government involvement.

How to explain this see-no-evil act? There are many reasons that news organizations will not tell the whole story, or fudge what could be revealed. Whatever is behind this shameful failure, reporters and editors know that the JFK assassination is just “too hot to handle,” that it is a kind of electrified third rail that can destroy a journalism career. But even well-founded fear—of being ridiculed, marginalized, demoted, or otherwise penalized—is no justification for this unrelenting pattern of behavior at an institution that promotes itself as a “paper of record.”

Anyone who calls him- or herself a journalist must be willing to take risks for the truth. After all, if the public can’t count on journalists to get it right on the big stories, why should they trust us on the rest? And if journalism can’t be trusted, democracy is on a slippery slope.

Edited July 29, 2011 by Robert Morrow

[Dawn Meredith]

Today I met with Russ Baker and talked with him about Family of Secrets. Interstingly he mentioned that Dan Rather had agreed to endorse and blurb the paperback edition that is coming out in October. Interesting person to get an endoresment from. Is Rather becoming more open to exploring certain issues?

Did this ever occur? I wonder if rather would be willing to stand up for the truth about the assassination of JFK now that he is no longer doing CBS' bidding.

Dawn

[William Kelly]

On page 16 of your book, Family of Secrets, you point out that Robert Crowley "managed the CIA relations with cooperative multinational corporations like Ford Motor Company and International Telephone and Telegraph". You then point out that Crowley told Joe Trento that he sometimes used businessmen like George Bush to work for the CIA. "It was much easier to simply set someone up in business like Bush and let him take orders."

Crowley was a major source for Joe Trento's Secret History of the CIA (2001). Crowley was also a source for other journalists working on books on the CIA. In "Molehunt: The Secret Search for Traitors that shattered the CIA (1992). He argued that Crowley was "a man of great wisdom". One of the problems of using CIA insiders is that it enables the agency to manage what is disclosed. Journalists who have used Crowley as a source never reveal details of his activities in the CIA.

I have recently found several documents that reveal that Crowley played an important role in the attempts to overthrow Fidel Castro in the early 1960s. This includes his involvement with characters like Frank Sturgis and Operation 40. I don't suppose you found any evidence that the connection between Crowley and Bush was Cuba? Crowley was also deeply involved in the efforts by the U.S. to overthrow the elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile.

I have not had the opportunity to look extensively into the nature of the Crowley-Bush relationship. However, I take everything that former high-ranking Agency people with a grain of salt. Often, what they reveal is a case of what in tradecraft is called a "limited hangout," in which they provide nominally accurate revelations as cover for even more disturbing and important facts. I cannot believe that people like Crowley could talk to journalists as he did without some kind of approval. So, yes, it is certainly possible that he was being essentially truthful in revealing some kind of operational connection with George HW Bush while not revealing the true extent of it. In any case, I would be interested in hearing directly (not via bulletin board) from anyone who has documents or other information pertaining to this relationship. I can be contacted via this site or at www.familyofsecrets.com .

Isn't Crowley the alleged source of Gregory Douglas' "Zipper Documents," that have been exposed as a fraud?

BK

[Guest Tom Scully]

Finally had a moment this weekend to reread parts of Family of Secrets. It holds up, pretty well I'd say. The chapter on Bush and de Mohrenschildt is stunning. Remarkable for the way it blends personal detail with wider corporate implications. I typed this, which includes one small part of the brilliant chapter 5. It may be useful for those who have not seen this book yet.

This book is an absolute must read.

----------

“In an era dominated by corporate journalism and an ideological right-wing media, Russ Baker’s work stands out for its fierce independence, fact-based reporting, and concern for what matters most to our democracy…A lot of us look to Russ to tell us what we didn’t know.” —Bill Moyers, author and host, Bill Moyers’ Journal (PBS)

There is probably nobody more important or laboriously multi-faceted character in all of Kennedy assassination literature than George de Mohrenschildt, the White Russian aristocrat, who met the Oswalds in Dallas, after their return form the USSR, and proceeded to introduce them to a key group of very highly connected oil and intelligence volk in the booming city's ever more influential petroleum circle. It was de Mohrenschildt who introduced to the Oswalds to the Paines, who put up Marina Oswald and her children, and who took such strange and detailed interest in the life of a professed "Marxist" defector to the Soviet Union's repatriation to the single most rightwing metropolis on the face of the earth. (Later it would be discovered that the both Paines had an immediate family history that was inseparable from US intelligence history.)

For much more on the fascinating Ruth Hyde Paine see http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKpaine.htm

(SEE SPARTACUS THREAD ON DE MOHRENSCHILDT FOR MORE ON THIS KEYSTONE FIGURE. THE GREAT THING ABOUT THE SPARTACUS THREADS ARE THE NUMEROUS DIFFERENT SOURCES, WHICH ARE DIRECTLY EXCERPTED AT THE BOTTOM OF EACH PATE. INVALUABLE RESOURCE, PROVIDED BY JOHN SIMKIN http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKdemohrenschildt.htm )

Russ Baker, in his new book Family of Secrets, has discovered a wealth of incredible detail that connects the de Mohrenschildt family with the Bush family on many different levels long before Oswald's #1 CIA handler ever met the returning marine and his Russian wife in Dallas in 1962. Baker traces these direct, high level intelligence and economic relations between the families of Bush and de Mohrenschildt right back to 1917 and shows that they also involved those at the summit of US diplomacy, including, Wilson's Secretary of State Lansing, Allen Dulles, and key Houston Anglophile (and Petrophile) Colonel Edward House, as well as the ancestors

of Bush Uber-aid, James A. Baker III.These ties are described in great detail, were not passing in nature, and are between five and seven closer than the "six degrees" type with which we have been encouraged to glaze over political history in recent years.

Then, barely into his new job as director of the CIA in 1976-- a job that he claimed was his first work for the Agency, but which is proven blatantly false by this book-- George H.W. Bush received this desperate plea for help from his old personal and family acquaintance:

Maybe you will be able to bring a solution into the hopeless

situation I find myself in. My wife and I find ourselves sur-

rounded by some vigilantes; our phone bugged; and we are

being followed everywhere. Either FBI is involved in this or

they do not want to accept my complaints. We are driven to

insanity by this situation... I tried to write, stupidly and un-

successfully , about Lee H. Oswald and must have angered

people... Could you do something to remove this net around

us? THis will be my last request for help and I will not annoy

you any more.

The writer signed himself "G. de Mohrenschildt."(1) p. 67.

The CIA assumed the latter writer to be a crank, Just to be sure, however, they asked their boss: did he by any chance know a man named de Mohrenschildt?

Bush Responded by Memo, seemingly, self-typed: "I do know this man DeMohrenschildt. I first men [sic] him in the early 40'3 [sic]. He was an uncle to my Andover roommate. Later he surfaced in Dallas (50's maybe)... Then he surfaced when Oswald shot to prominence. He knew Oswald before the assassination of Pres. Kennedy. I don't recall his role in all this."

Half a year later, de Mohrenschildt was dead. It was one of the most suspicious deaths in a very long list associated with the Kennedy assassination and its investigation. The death occurred just two days before de Mohrenschildt was scheduled to testify before the House Select Committee on Assassinations, and only around an hour after an interview with a journalist employed by Time-Life, the single most intelligence connected media company in US history, and a company present at nearly every crucial turn of the investigations long history-- including the purchase and storage of the Zapruder film by top Psychological Warfare expert and Henry Luce's Far Right hand, C.D. Jackson (see Spartacus thread). Here is more from Russ Baker's incredible book. While it is very difficult to capture how the pieces fit together in a book filled with such byzantine detail-- yet also impeccable documentation-- this passage is useful in showing that the assassination was much more than a case of spies and individuals disconnected form clear policy forks in the road. On the contrary, vast structures of political and economic power were involved in such a way as to constantly remind us of the single, vulgar reality: when Allan Dulles plaid midwife to the CIA, the manger was Wall Street.

_____________________________

Cuba Si, Cuba No

During the 1950's, as petroleum reserves in the Southwest declined, oilmen there were looking to the southern hemisphere for new opportunities. George de Mohrenschildt, who always seemed to move at the behest of people of higher rank than himself, turned to Cuba. He later told the Warren Commission that he left the Buckley's [as in William F.] Pantepec Oil back in 1946 after a falling-out with a company vice president. Yet by 1950 he was working with his former boss, Pantepec president Warren Smith, on the latter's new firm called the Cuban-Venezuelan Oil Voting Trust Company (CVOVT). In passing, de Mohrenschildt mentioned to the commission that the CVOVT had managed to obtain leases covering nearly half of Cuba. He appears to have been telling the truth, but Warren Commission counsel Albert E. Jenner Jr. did not find this remarkable fact interesting. (21)

This showed that de Mohrenschildt was no rogue operator or bohemian-- as Jenner repeatedly sought to characterize him. Rather he was at the center of a major corporate effort, involving many of America's largest institutions. Through connections in the Batista regime, the CVOVT had managed to corner exclusive exploration rights to millions of acres on the island. Like all foreign businesses operating in Cuba, it had to work through the dictator's American intermediaries, notably, the mobster Meyer Lansky, who was de facto representative of American "interests" on the island(22).

The CVOVT never amounted to much besides promising reports and modest production(23) Still it became a Wall Street darling. Though now almost completely forgotten, on many days in the mid-1950's, it was one of the four or five most actively traded issue on the American Stock Exchange. By November 30, 1956, the New York Times had this announcement:

The Cuban Stanolind Oil Company, an affiliate of the Standard Oil

Company (Indiana), has signed an agreement with the Cuban Ven-

ezuaelan Oil Voting Trust and Trans-Cuba Oil Company for the

development of an additional 3,000,000 acres in Cuba. This is in

addition to the original agreement covering 12,000,000, acres.

Stanolind has agreed to start drilling within 120 days and maintain

a one-rig continuous drilling program [for] three years (24)

This was apparently a big deal for companies like Stanolind, which had no foreign production at all until it went into Cuba. Affording to its filing, it was formed in Havana in 1950 "to assure continuity of management and stability of policy for shareholders of twenty-four oil companies in South America" (25) That is it was some kind of holding company with a focus on "Stability" in Latin American countries, which could reasonably be assumed to refer to creating conditions of political stability favorable to the exploration activities.

The Empire Trust Company, a New York-based bastion of power and wealth, appears to have played a key role in the financing of the Cuban venture. A short item in the New York Times of May 14, 1956, noted:

Election of Charles LEslie Rice, a vice president of the Empire

Trust Company of New York, as a voting trustee of the Cuban-

Venezuelan Oil Voting Trust, was announced over the week-end.

Empire Trust's John Loeb had a network of associates that amounted to "something very like a private CIA," wrote Stephen Birmingham in Our Crowd: The Great Jewish Families of

New York.(26) Empire worked hard to protect its foreign investments and especially its stake in the defense contractor General Dynamics. Empire entrusted its affairs in Texas to Baker Botts, the law firm of James Baker's family(27) Besides Rice, another Empire Trust director was Lewis MacNaughton, a Dresser Industries board member from 1959 to 1967.

[Dresser industries, as Baker shows earlier in the book, was an oil drilling equipment company with global intelligence connections that in some ways remind one of Howard Hughes Hughes Tool Co. The company connected the Harriman, Bush, Walker and Mallon families, and was a key platform for both H.W. Bush's political career in Taxes and, in the more literal sense, for CIA operations against Fidel Castro's Cuba in the late 1950's and the early (but how late??) 1960s --N.H.]

MacNaughton was the employer of George Bouhe, the Russian emigre who would later introduce George de Mohrenschildt to Lee Harvey Oswald. Perhaps the most curious of the Empire Trust figures was Jack Crichton, a longtime company vice president who joined Empire in August 1953 and remained through 1962. (28)

Crichton, who had been hired soon after leaving the military in 1946 by oil industry wunderkind Everette DeGolyer, quickly, quickly became a go-to guy for numerous powerful interests seeking a foothold in the energy arena. He started and ran a baffling array of companies, which tended to change names frequently. These operated largely bellow the radar, and fronted for some of North America's biggest names, including the Bronfmans (Seagram's liquor), the Du Ponts, and the Kuhn-Loeb family of financiers. According to his former lawyer Crichton traveled to the Middle East on oil-related intelligence business. On behalf of prominent interests, he was involved with George de Mohrenschildt in his oil exploration venture in Pre-Castro Cuba. In a 2001 oral history, Crichton volunteered that he was a friend of George de Mohrenschildt's: "I liked George. He was a nice guy." (29)

By 1956, in addition to his other duties, Crichton started a military intelligence reserve unit on the side. (30) On the day of Kennedy's assassination, as will be elaborated upon in Chapter 7, he would arrange for a member of the Dallas Russian Community to rush to Marina Oswald's side and provide translations for investigators--which were far from literal translations of her Russian words and had the effect of implicating her husband in Kennedy's death. Shortly after the assassination, Crichton would become the GOP nominee for governor of Texas in a race against the incumbent John Connally, who had recovered from his wounds of November 22. On the same ticker was the Republican nominee for the United States Senate, Poppy Bush. Unfortunately for the rich and powerful behind the Cuban oil venture in the 19560s, just as the possibility of extracting vast wealth from that small island drew increasing interest from Wall Street, Fidel Castro's revolution was gaining strength. At the same time, what look to have been intelligence operations under oil industry cover were moving into position, as Poppy Bush began moving his rigs to Howard Hughes's Cay Sal Bank in the Bahamas.

On January 1, 1959, Fulgencio Batista fled Cuba, and the next day Casto's Army marched into Havana.

On November 22, 1959, the New York Times reported that the new Cuban government had approved a law that would reduce the size of private companies. These claims were now limited to twenty thousand acres, a major setback for companies such as CVOVT, with its fifteen million acres. (31).

According to the Times, big foreign oil companies had already spent more than thirty million dollars looking for oil over the preceding twelve years. The article cited petroleum industry sources speculating that nationalization of the refining industry was soon to come. The government also imposed a 60 per cent royalty on oil production believed to be the highest anywhere. Standard Oil of New Jersey had, according to the article invested thirty-five million dollars in a Cuban refinery, and other companies had invested comparable sums. (32)

Among other things, the new law put an end to the go-go days of the Cuban-Venezuelan Oil Voting Trust stock. That story was summed up neatly in William A. Doyle's syndicated advice column, the Daily Investor," on August 14, 1961:

Q.I bought some shares of Cuban-Venezuelan Oil Voting Trust a couple years ago.

This stock was listed on the American Stock Exchange but I never see it quoted

there any more. What's the trouble?

A. The trouble is spelled C-a-s-t-r-o.When that bearded dictator took over the

government in Cuba, he started kicking American investors smack in the pocket-

book. The Cuban-Venezuelan Oil Voting Trust story is somewhat involved. But

its chief cause of grief came when the Communist-oriented Cuban government

refused to explore its concession to explore for oil. That just about wrecked this

outfit. The stock's price dropped. You won't find the shares quoted on the

American Stock Exchange, because this stock was de-listed from that exchange,

as of Dec. 1, 1960. Technically, it is still possible to buy and sell these shares in

the over-the-counter market. But you'll be lucky if you can get 10 cents a share.(33)

Brown Brothers Harriman [very very close Bush-Malon ties discussed earlier in book] also had a stake in Cuban affairs that went back at least to the 1920's. ITs affiliate, the Punta Alegre Sugar Corporation, controlled more than two hundred thousand acres in the province of Cameguey (34). Officials of the firm served on the board of Punta Alegre up to the moment that Castro expropriated its land-- and even afterward, as the sugar company began moving its remaining assets to the United States.

The CIA's Allen Dulles responded quickly to developments on the island. He created the Cuban Task Force, with teams in charge of clandestine operations, psychological warfare, and economic and diplomatic pressure. Out of these emerged Operation 40, an elite group of Cuban exiles who, after specialized training, were to infiltrate Cuba and deal a mortal blow to the revolution, including the assassination of its principal leaders.

The chief of the task force was Tracy Barnes, a Yale graduate and Dulles's wartime OSS comrade who was related to the Rockefeller clan by marriage. More than a decade earlier, Barnes's first CIA job had been as deputy director of the Psychological Strategy Board, a little-known entity that explored everything from the use of psychotropic drugs as truth serum to the possibility of engineering unwitting assassins, i.e. Manchurian Candidates. Later, he worked on the successful 1954 operation to overthrow the democratically elected president of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz. Barnes had received propaganda support form David Atlee Phillips and E. Howard Hunt, including the distribution of faked photographs

purporting to show the mutilated bodies of Arbenz opponents.

Phillips and Hunt would be hounded by allegations that they had been present in Dallas on November 22, 1963. Both men consistently denied it. But according to his son St. John Hunt, E. Howard began confessing knowledge of a plot against Kennedy near the end of his life and named Phillips as one of the participants.(35)

Hunt and Phillips attended the first meeting of the Cuba Task Force, held January 18, 1960 in Barnes office. Barnes spoke at length on the objectives. He explained that Air Force General Charles Cabell, a Texan (and brother of Dallas's mayor), would be in charge of air cover for an invasion, and that VIce President Richard Nixon, whose brief included some national security areas, was the administration's Cuba "case officer."

In his memoirs, former Cuban intelligence official Fabian Escalante asserted that Nixon had met with an important group of Texas businessmen to arrange outside funding for the operation. Escalente, whose service was vaunted for its U.S. spy network, claimed that the Texas group was headed by George H.W. Bush and Jack Crichton. Escalente's assertion cannot be easily dismissed: Crichton's role in covert operations, about which extensive new information is provided in chapter 7 was little understood at the time Escalante published his memoirs. (36)

In March 1960, the Eisenhower administration signed off on a plan to equip and train Cuban exiles, and drills soon began in Florida and Guatemala. One of Dulles's top three aides, the covert operations chief Richard M. Bissell (Yale '32), was made director. Around this time, George de Mohrenschildt happened to take a business trip to Mexico City , where the CIA station was deeply involved in the coming attractions.

By the fall of 1962, when de Mohrehschildt was devoting much of his time to squiring Lee Harvey Oswald, he had gained entree to the creme de la creme of the petroleum world. One longtime buddy of his and of Poppy Bush's, offshore drilling expert George Kitchel, would tell the FBI in 1964 that de Mohrenschildt counted among his good fiends the oil tycoons Clint Murchison, H.L. Hunt, John Mecom, and Sid Richardson. Other commission testimony revealed that in the couple of years prior to the Kennedy assassination, de Mohrenschildt had traveled frequently from Dallas to Houston, where he visited with figures such as George Brown of Brown and Root, the construction and military contracting giant that helped launch LBJ's career, and Jean de Menil of Schlumberger, the huge oil services firm.

Several of these men had even sent de Mohrenschild abroad on business; one could be forgiven for wondering if these trips were in fact what the CIA calls "commercial cover." George Brown had dispatched him to Mexico, where his mission seemed to be heading off a Mexican government oil deal with the Soviet deputy premier Anastas Mikoyan, who arrived at the same time. (37) Murchison dispatched him to Haiti on several occasions. In 1958, he went to Yugoslavia on what was said to be business for Mecom--whose foundation, the San Jacinto Fund, was later identified as a CIA funding conduit.

The Warren Commission knew at least pieces of all this. Yet in 1964, after two and a half days of testimony by George de Mohrenschildt and his wife Jeanne, the commission would conclude that George was essentially an eccentric if well-connceted figure whose life encompassed a series of strange coincidences. (Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, The Powerful Forces That Put It Into the White House, and What Their Influence Means For America) p. 79-84)

http://paw.princeton.edu/memorials/51/21/index.xml

Charles Leslie Rice Jr. '41

Published in May 7, 1997, issue

Les Rice died Feb. 11, 1997, in Red Bank, N.J. His last six years were spent in a wheelchair after back surgery, but his optimism never dimmed.

He was our class's Pyne Prize winner. His wife, Pauline Seaberg, died in 1992.

Les came to Princeton from high school in La Grange, Ill. He majored in history, joined Charter, played varsity football, and was active with Orange Key and the Republican Club. He remained a trustee of the American Whig-Cliosophic Society for many decades following graduation. Les joined the Army in 1941 and rose to captain, winning a Bronze Star and Cluster.

Following the war, Dean Mathey '12, Princeton's patron-saint trustee, benefactor, and Wall St. magician, recruited Les as his protege. Having learned much from Mathey at Empire Trust Co., Les set out on his own. He was president and CEO of Gulf States Land & Industries, Inc., working in Texas and living in New Jersey. He retired in 1980 and continued to be active in his Mandan Corp. in Red Bank and in a host of local charities.....

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?mode=searchResult&absPageId=562406

Found in: HSCA Segregated CIA Collection (microfilm - reel 27: JURE - MRP)

9377 JMZIP PM SkCUR MRP EXILE LEADER JOAQUIN GODOY Y SOLIS HAS FIREND IN NYC NAMED MR JACK COGSWELL ADDRESS 125 E 57TH ST COGSWELL ,HAS INFORMED GODOY THAT MR LESLIE RICE ADDRESS 20 BROAD ST. NYC

RIF#: 104-10271-10021 (11/22/61) CIA#: 80T01357A

What is nagging at me is that Cogswell, a CIA asset I have written extensively about, was not only married in 1953 to Joan Farish, first cousin of Bush best friend Will Farish, III, son of the William Farish who was an usher in Tom Devine's father- in-law's, Samuel Wynn Mills's (Yale S& 1937 wedding, and Cogswell's best man was working for Lem Billings and his boss Francis McAdoo at Emerson Drug, but Cogswell also had an only sibling married to Rawle Deland.

Deland ended up running the family founded, executive recruiting firm, Thorndike Deland. That firm and RS Reynolds struck a common chord in my suspicious mind.:

https://members.aesc.org/eweb/upload/AESC_50thanniversary_Article_FINAL.pdf

...Russell Reynolds Associates, founded in 1969 by Russell S. Reynolds, Jr., a Yale

graduate and former commercial banker with J.P. Morgan, cultivated a style of its

own. By 1984, the firm’s Park Avenue headquarters featured a Steinway piano

in the reception area and a Winston Churchill painting in one of the interviewing

rooms.

Reynolds, now chairman of RSR Partners, said, “I owe everything I know about

the search business to William Clark,” who ran a highly regarded search firm that

bore his name and had been spun off from accounting firm Price Waterhouse.

Reynolds had worked at William H. Clark Associates for three years before setting

out on his own.

Jonathan Bush is an RS Reynolds director. William B. Macomber, Jr. was Tom Devine's best man, Nancy Bush's best man, and I've linked Macomber, Ernest Byfield, Jr. and William Casey to the tiny, top secret OSSEX circa D-Day 1944, OSS infiltration program. Byfield, Jr. was the best man of William HG Fitzgerald, Oliver W. Hammonds was an usher and became Jack Crichton's co-director and accountant at Arabian Shield Corp.

Fitzgerald was a longtime co-director and officer with Macomber's brother, John, at the Atlantic Council.

Fitzgerald's son married Robert G. Stone, Jr.'s daughter. Stone was made a co-director at RS Reynolds for what Russ Baker suspected was a quid pro quo for the heat Stone took in pouring Harvard investment funds into Quasha's Harken Energy which turned Bush, Jr.'s fortune and reputation around, overnight.

Tom Devine is a longtime board member of Stone's Texas firm, Stonetex, founded in 1950. So was Stone's brother, David, who was implicated in the CIA funding of student orgs. in 1967, in collaboration with the Boston lawyer who ran and represented Dr. Tom Dooley, and who was nailed to the setting up of at least two CIA proprietary Corps.

Frank Vanderlip, Jr. hosted an engagement dinner, to celebrate the wedding engagement of RS Reynolds's father in 1928. In 1966 the NY Times mentioned that Vanderlip, Jr. was the godfather or Quasha's sister, Jill.

So on the surface it appears as a series of cooperative incidents between a relatively small, super secretive, tight knit group, over a long number of years and there are an astounding number of coincidental "building blocks".

At the heart of it is Skull and Bones, CIA, General Dynamics, Big Texas Oil, Chicago Mob.... not that dissimilar from what Torbitt detailed.... and it may have taken JFK out, and put two Bushes in.

One for Robert Morrow. Some woman I came across in this research is quoted as saying Roy Cohn is "different"...he's Rosemary's baby. When I read it I compared it with the sensational "stuff" you seem so fond of lapping up and distributing anywhere and everywhere.