Edwin Walker

[David Lifton]

Edwin Walker's event was a put-on to help frame up the patsy.

If one of the unmarked Mannlichers could fire into the house, the guy would be a lone nut gunman after the fact...

Ok, so I'm trying to understand the Walker episode. It's almost up there with the Tippit mystery.

I'm leaning towards believing, along with Shanet, that it was part of the setup to make the patsy look like a hard core left wing gun-totin' wacko.

But... if that's the case then why wasn't the Walker episode publicized more after Oswald's death to reinforce the image they were manufacturing of him?

Was it publicized a lot to help incriminate the patsy but I'm not aware of it?

Seems like the propagandists would want maximum mileage out of the incident; why bother to set it up otherwise?

Hi Myra,

The Walker episode was in fact given lots of publicity--and the "start date" for the print media was Saturday, December 7, 1963.

Here's the basic chronology:

4/10/63: Oswald left Marina a note, which provided instructions as to what to do if he was arrested or "taken alive". Someting like that. Marina, of course, was frightened. What the heck was going on, she wondered.

Then, later that night, Oswald came rushing in, and lay down on the bed, shaking and palefaced, and told her he had shot Walker. He turned on the radio, flipping from station to staion, and listened to news reports, translating for Marina. (This is what she said. The Lord only knows if Oswald actually was faithfully translating).

The next morning, he bought a newspaper home, and told Marina that Walker had escaped death, but it was by sheer accident; that he (Lee) had really tried to kill him, but Walker had moved his head at the last minute. Lee told her, according to Marina, that he was sorry that he had missed.

Marina was angry, and scared. She was a child of Stalinist Russia,and here was her husband telling her that he had tried ot murder a U.S. army general.

She saved the note and told Oswald she would go to the police, if he ever did anthing like that again.

This is critical, because the note functioned as "the trigger."

MARINA AND THE HIDDEN NOTE

Marina had hidden it, and on November 22, when she heard (from Ruth Paine) that JFK was shot rom the building where Lee worked, she ran to the garage to see if the rifle was still in the blanket. She saw the blanket, and mistakenly concluded it contained the rifle.

When the police arrived later, and asked point blank if her husband owned a rile, she pointed to the blanket (which she thought contained the rifle). When they raised it, and it was empty, her heart sank.

She was scared, and fightened.

She couldn't understand why Lee, who loved Kennedy, was shoot him. En route to the poiice station, seated next to Ruth Paine, she asked Paine (in a low voice, and in Russian): "Was Walker in the car with him?" (This is in Paine's sworn testimony).

Marina kept the Walker affair totally secret until Tuesday, December 2, 1963. That's when the Secret Service--screening Marina's incoming mail and packages--opened a book that had been dropped of at the Irving Poice department, by Ruth Paine, on Saturday, November 30.

The book contained the note.

THE NOTE AS "THE TRIGGER"

Please note: the note functioned as "the trigger". Without the note, those involved in this farce couldn't surface the Walker affair without revealing their own foreknowledge of the supposed "link" between the two events.

IMHO: The note was "supposed to be found" on Friday afternoon, 11/22--but Marina (who is really quite clever, and was very protective of Lee) had hidden the note in a book.

When certain police officers were searching the Paine home on Saturday, 11/23, Ruth Paine reports that they were flipping through various books, as if "looking for something"--and I'll bet they were!

But, they couldn't find it. (Hurray for Marina!)

However, . . that changed on Monday, December 2. SS agent Gopadze, who fount the note, called Marina on the telephone. She denied all knowledge.

Then he confronted Ruth Paine with the note: she said she knew nothing about it (and she didn't).

Then, on Tuesday, December 3, he personaly went to where Marina was staying, and showed her the note. Confronted with the note, her defenses collapsed, and Marina then told the whole story. The FBI interviewed her hours later that same day (December 3, Agents Boguslav and Heitman) and so now it was officially a matter of record: Marina had now confessed to what the note was all about--that her husband Lee Oswald had attempted to shoot General Walker the previous April, and indeed, that he told her that he had tried to kill him.

THE WALKER BULLET

Of course, there's a whole ancillary story about the bullet that was recovered from Walker's house. And by the way--it was not found inside a wall, or anything like that. It had (supposedly) gone through a wall, and was found lying atop some papers in another room (shades of 399!. . only this one was really battered and scrunched up).

Also, there's the question of whether Walker --somehow--"knew" his supposed sniper was Oswald, and told that right wing German newspaper exactliy that in a translatlantic phone call on 11/23/63. He also behaved that same way with another journalist on Saturday, November 30, implying that his sniper had been Oswald, three days before Marina admitted that to the FBI.

A KEY DATE: DECEMBER 7, 1963

The fact that Marina had told the FBI that her husband had shot at Walker was released to the press on Friday, December 6 (via the Dallas Police Department)--along with reports that Walker's name and phone number was in Oswald's address book--and all of that was headline news in the nations media on Saturday, December 7.

The New York Times (for example) ran it as their lead story that Saturday--it was page 1, column 8. The headline: "Oswald linked to a shot fired at General Walker."

The sub-heads read: "Said to Have Told Someone, Thought to be His Wife, of Dallas Attack in April.

And: "BULLET PIECES STUDIED"

"But Fragments Cannot Be Conclusively Connected to Kennery Murder Gun"

Here's the lead:

Dallas, Dec. 6 - A rifle shot that narrowly missed former Maj. Gen. Edwin A Walker in his dallas home last April 10 was ired by Lee H. Oswald, police sources said today.

Oswald, the accused assassin of President Kennedy, told at least one person that he fired the shot at Mr. Walker, it was learned. That peson was believed to have been Oswald's Russian-born wife, Marina."

etc etc.

Myra, you can ignore those who propound the notion that Marina "made it up." I knew Marina well for about 14 years. Let me assure you: She did not "make it up." (That's the kind of line thats proposed by those who have a tendency, in this case, to "shoot the messenger" instead of reading the message.)

Walker was Marina's personal nightmare, and she spent years coming to terms with it.

In fact, the Walker affair was a major factor in causing Marina's "defenses" to collapse--circa Dec 3, 1963--and for her to move to the position that her husband had (apparently) shot Kennedy. That's what she really believed, for a while--indeed, for a long while.

She held that position from December, 1963, all the way through 1981.

MY OWN CONTACTS WITh MARINA - - starting in January, 1981

BEST EVIDENCE was published in January, 1981, and it was that month that I met Marina for the first time.

Between Jan 1981, and 1988, I spoke with Marina dozens and dozens of times. There's no question but that I was instrumental in leading her away from that position, and providing alternate explanatons for the strange behavior of her husband. Subsequently, Marina reversed her position, and said so in a series of interviews with Myrna Blyth, the editor of the Ladies Home Journal, which were published in November, 1988. At that time, Marina "came out" and said that she no longer believed the official version.

I worked closely with the produers and screen writer of the Marina Oswald story, aired in 1993. That was the first time the Walker affair was portrayed (albeit briefly) as a setup.

Marina no longer believes her husband assassianted President Kennedy, but (I don't think) she was ever able to get around the fact that Lee Oswald came running in that night, and said he had in fact shot at Walker.

In short, she was the victim of a manipulation. Of course, Lee did not intend to die that weekend, and not be around "to explain."

As I learned from many conversations, Marina was something of a poet. In our 1990 filmed interview, she talked about her mixed feelings towards Lee and said "He left me to swim in this dirty water."

Hope this helps.

To be continued. . .

DSL

Edited May 21, 2012 by David Lifton

[Al Fordiani]

Question(s) for David Lifton: Why would/did Marina keep the note? Why hide it at all? Why not just destroy it? Any ideas on that?

The whole Walker affair is really interesting.

Thanks,

ALF

[David Lifton]

Question(s) for David Lifton: Why would/did Marina keep the note? Why hide it at all? Why not just destroy it? Any ideas on that?

The whole Walker affair is really interesting.

Thanks,

ALF

ALF,

I have no idea. All I know is what she said--which was that she was "saving it" to use if he ever did anything like that again.

In other words, she was not his "enabler" at all. . to the contrary, she wanted him to cut out all this behavior, which she called his "spy games."

DSL

[David Lifton]

Question(s) for David Lifton: Why would/did Marina keep the note? Why hide it at all? Why not just destroy it? Any ideas on that?

The whole Walker affair is really interesting.

Thanks,

ALF

One other thing: I have believed--for decades--that LHO was "gaslighting" Marina, on a number of issues, most notably Walker.

This is a term from my parents generation (and comes from a famous film starring Ingrid Bergman).

No time to really write at length. I strongly recommend that you Google the term "gaslighting". Read Wikipedia, plus the other major entries.

From Wikipedia: "Gaslighting is a term, often used by mental health professionals (I am not one), to describe manipulative behavior used to confuse people into thinking their reactions are so far off base that they’re crazy.

The term comes from the 1944 MGM film, Gaslight, starring Ingrid Bergman. etc."

If Walker was a staged event, as some think (and I know the local FBI thought so), then this terminology is important to understand. Personally, I also believe its important to understand what has been called the "Richard Nixon incident" which is still another example of this kind of mental abuse. (Or the nonsense when LHO told Marina he wanted to hijack an airplane).

Again let me repeat what I told Myra, based on the 14 years during which I knew Marina (I first met her in Jan 1981, when B.E. was published) and spoke to her often: you can ignore/discount those who subscribe to the false notion that "Marina is lying" or that "Marina made it up." She did neither. This was the reality, as presented to her by Lee--and with which she had to deal. She also poured her heart out to Priscilla McMillan, and that's why these same things appear in that book. (It was not McMillan's fault--is what I am saying).

I did a major amount of "listening and explaining" to Marina (over a period of many years) which was similar to "de-programming" someone who had been brought into a cult. That is why, when she sold the rights to her story to Wolper (around 1991 or so), she explained to the producers how important her our many conversations had been (and so they told me they wanted to make me a character in that movie!) Of course, the very brief conversations shown in the movie (which is the way screenwriters "condense" things) can not possibly capture the extent of the many conversations we had. One side note: The original philosophy of the program was that Marina had married a nut; but, with my encouragement (and Marina's obstinence) the project underwent a serious (and wonderful) reversal. As I recall, Marina stood her ground, drove Wolper senior (the original David L Wolper) nuts, and the result was neat. I consulted with Steve Bello quite a bit, and gave him valuable background information. Consequently, Fatal Deception is, I believe, probably the first nationally broadcast program with a sympathetic portrait of Oswald. That was thanks to the excellent screenwriting of Steve Bello, the sanction of producer Bernard Safronski, and the fine work of director Robert Dornheim.

As you may know (or perhaps you don't), Marina "went public" with her completely revised view of the Kennedy assassination, and the fact that she had changed her mind about Oswald's culpability, in 1988. At that time she was interviewed by Myrna Blythe, editor of the Ladies Home Journal, and the article marking Marina's "coming out" on the issue of LHO's innocence, can be found in the Nov 1988 issue of that magazine.

But. . back to the term "gaslighting".

Look it up. Read all about it.

Happy reading.

DSL

Edited May 22, 2012 by David Lifton

[Paul Trejo]

<snip>

Myra, you can ignore those who propound the notion that Marina "made it up." I knew Marina well for about 14 years. Let me assure you: She did not "make it up." (That's the kind of line thats proposed by those who have a tendency, in this case, to "shoot the messenger" instead of reading the message.)

Walker was Marina's personal nightmare, and she spent years coming to terms with it. In fact, the Walker affair was a major factor in causing Marina's "defenses" to collapse--circa Dec 3, 1963--and for her to move to the position that her husband had (apparently) shot Kennedy. That's what she really believed, for a while--indeed, for a long while.

She held that position from December, 1963, all the way through 1981...There's no question but that I was instrumental in leading her away from that position, and providing alternate explanatons for the strange behavior of her husband.

...

Also, there's the question of whether Walker --somehow--"knew" his supposed sniper was Oswald, and told that right wing German newspaper exactliy that in a translatlantic phone call on 11/23/63. He also behaved that same way with another journalist on Saturday, November 30, implying that his sniper had been Oswald, three days before Marina admitted that to the FBI.BEST EVIDENCE was published in January, 1981, and it was that month that I met Marina for the first time.

Marina no longer believes her husband assassianted President Kennedy, but (I don't think) she was ever able to get around the fact that Lee Oswald came running in that night, and said he had in fact shot at Walker.

In short, she was the victim of a manipulation. Of course, Lee did not intend to die that weekend, and not be around "to explain." . . .

Hope this helps.. . .

DSL

It's a strong argument, David, with much to recommend it. The notion that Lee Oswald 'gaslighted' Marina Oswald is appropriate insofar as Lee Oswald was working underground for U.S. intelligence agencies and had to keep Marina in the dark. It makes interpretation of events much more difficult.

I agree with you that Marina is telling the truth about Lee Oswald's confession that he shot at General Walker. Yet I would add a few points:

1. The Walker shooting was not only Marina's personal nightmare, it was also the personal nightmare of George De Mohrenshildt, Jeanne De Mohrenshildt, Volkmar Schmidt, Michael Paine and Ruth Paine, more or less in that order. They were all to some degree guilty of the Walker shooting (as General Edwin Walker liked to emphasize). They were all accessories after the fact -- they knew (or strongly suspected) that Lee was the April shooter, but they were moral cowards -- they did not tell the police or the FBI.

2. Also, you ask whether Walker "knew" his sniper was Oswald, and whether he told the Deutsche NationalZeitung about it in a translatlantic phone call on 11/23/63, at 7am. According to Dick Russell, Mr. and Mrs. Voshinin, good friends of George De Mohrenschildt, heard George's confession on Easter Sunday, and they called the FBI immediately after George's visit. Therefore, the FBI knew on Easter Sunday, 1963, that Lee Harvey Oswald was a serious suspect. YET THEY DID NOT ARREST HIM.

3. General Walker -- for the rest of his life -- promoted this story to the world -- not just to the Deutsche NationalZeitung. We know he told the German newspaper because we have FBI records of the fact from Helmut Muench -- the actual reporter of that newspaper. And after he told the German newspaper, Walker told the National Enquirer the same story (with a few embellishments) and then he told the John Birch Society for their January 1964 issue (with additional embellishments) and then he told several others according to the evidence (in links) that I found in the Briscoe Center archives, and listed in my last post.

4. The FBI would not tell the truth about it -- they had more to hide than anybody else.

5. Oswald wanted to be admired by others -- and to impress his wife with some great deed of heroism. But he was not well-liked by his associates. De Mohrenschildt befriended Oswald first and foremost because the CIA offered him business contacts in exchange for babysitting Lee. Volkmar Schmidt tolerated Oswald because he was good chums with De Mohrenschildt. Michael Paine tolerated Oswald because of Ruth's friendship with Marina. And so on. Oswald was a political parvenu, and any educated person could see right through him. So, Oswald would aggrandize himself by political dramatics. In a way, Lee Oswald was a drama baby - as many of those who knew him testified.

(Lee was not well-liked, and he sulked too much, but unless he was hiding out making binary code messages or false ID cards, Lee Oswald was always with other people. Yet because of the nature of Lee's affairis, Marina never met most of those people.)

6. In Ft. Worth, where George De Mohrenschildt first met the Oswalds, there was a large Russian Exile community, and they really liked Marina, but not Lee. One of them, George Bouhe, fell in love with Marina and showered her with gifts and cash. Lee Oswald became intensely jealous of Bouhe, and threatened him. This prompted Lee's first fights with Marina, and their move to Dallas.

7. Ron Lewis, who claims to have befriended Oswald in New Orleans in the summer of 1963, said that Lee would carry his rifle around with him in New Orleans. Lee threatened to shoot members of the Huey Long family, said Lewis. Lee Oswald was emotional, and a loose cannon, despite his intellectual pretentions.

In summary, I agree with you that Marina is telling the truth, and she never changed her story about Walker. The story is genuine, and the only missing element is the "rest of the story," because all she knew was the "gaslighting" story that Lee Oswald told her.

Dick Russell, in my opinion, tells the "rest of the story." Lee was not on foot that night. Lee was not alone that night. Larrie and/or Bob Schmidt drove their car(s) and took their rifle(s) as well, and there were at least two (if not three) shooters that night, and Lee Harvey Oswald was only one of them.

The Walker shooting is more important to the JFK murder case than the Tippit case, in my opinion, because I believe that General Walker heard from the FBI as soon as they received the report from the Voshinins. Walker then set out to get revenge on Lee Harvey Oswald, through his Minute Men pals in New Orleans - namely, Guy Banister and David Ferrie. They would also engage Cuban Exiles into their sheep-dipping plot. Walker seems to have sought to kill two birds with one stone.

Best regards,

--Paul Trejo

<edit typos>

Edited May 23, 2012 by Paul Trejo

[Bernice Moore]

Given the almost hysterical right-wing bias of Dallas, given a “Patriot” whose brain had envisioned the wholesale slaughter of public officials, an all too easy assumption is that Oswald may have been the pawn in some devious right-wing conspiracy. But, again, it is not necessarily so. In the background are Oswald’s undeniable Castroite activities and his earlier attempt, seemingly well established by the testimony of his wife, to assassinate rightist Maj. Gen. Edwin A. Walker. That abortive attempt at murder is said to have taken place on the evening of April 10, 1963, when a bullet, fired through the window of Walker’s study, missed his head by inches, went through a wall and was later recovered, battered beyond identification, on some packing cases in an adjoining room. Marina Oswald testified that her husband, before going out that evening, had instructed her on how to act if he never came back. She said that he later admitted to her that he fired the shot, and that he hid the rifle for a time so that he would not be caught with the evidence if the bullet should be traced.

The Walker incident could suggest a plot by some Castroite fanatics of Oswald’s own persuasion. For one thing, there are some indications, vague and indefinite but still disturbing, that Oswald was not alone in the Walker attempt. Robert Alan Surrey, who described himself as General Walker’s partner in a book-publishing venture devoted to right-wing propaganda (he claimed the Fifth Amendment when the Warren Commission sought to question him about his role in distributing a scurrilous handbill that showed President Kennedy’s picture under the headline, “Wanted for Treason”) said that two nights before the shooting he had seen a car parked about 20 yards from Walker’s house: “I saw two men around the house peeking into the windows and so forth.” The men leaped into the car and sped away. Surrey chased them, but lost them. The next morning he reported the incident to General Walker, who notified the police. Surrey said he had not had a good look at either of the prowlers, and could not identify either as Oswald.

On the night of the Walker shooting, a next-door neighbor, Walter Kirk Coleman, 15, heard the sound of the shot. He ran out and peered over a picket fence into a Mormon Church parking lot that adjoined the Walker property. Coleman subsequently told authorities that he saw two men. One was hurrying toward the driver’s seat of a Ford, parked headed out with lights on and motor running. The other went to a Chevrolet parked by the fence adjacent to the Walker property, and appeared to put something into the back of the car before getting in behind the wheel. Coleman could not tell whether there was anyone else in either car. Both cars drove away. Later, shown a picture of Oswald, Coleman told the FBI that neither of the men he saw resembled Oswald. And there it ends.

http://karws.gso.uri.edu/JFK/History/WC_Period/Reactions_to_Warren_Report/Reactions_of_left/Testimony_of_eyewitnesses--Cook/Testimony_of_eyewitnesses.html

[Bernice Moore]

Some of the photos of information available re Walker...b fwtaw....walker bullet may not be walker bullet......

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=18625&st=0

Edited May 23, 2012 by Bernice Moore

[Bernice Moore]

http://whokilledjfk.net/Walker.htm

http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/Photos_-_HSCA_Public_Hearings_Exhibits_-_p6

fyi

[Paul Trejo]

... In the background are Oswald’s undeniable Castroite activities and his earlier attempt, seemingly well established by the testimony of his wife, to assassinate rightist Maj. Gen. Edwin A. Walker...The Walker incident could suggest a plot by some Castroite fanatics of Oswald’s own persuasion...

...There are some indications, vague and indefinite but still disturbing, that Oswald was not alone in the Walker attempt. Robert Alan Surrey, who described himself as General Walker’s partner in a book-publishing venture devoted to right-wing propaganda...said that two nights before the shooting he had seen a car parked about 20 yards from Walker’s house: “I saw two men around the house peeking into the windows and so forth.” The men leaped into the car and sped away...On the night of the Walker shooting, a next-door neighbor, Walter Kirk Coleman, 15...told authorities that he saw two men. One was hurrying toward the driver’s seat of a Ford, parked headed out with lights on and motor running. The other went to a Chevrolet parked by the fence adjacent to the Walker property, and appeared to put something into the back of the car before getting in behind the wheel...

Bernice, you link the two points together -- first suggesting that Oswald, the 'Castroite' and his fellow Communists had a motive to kill the right-wing General Walker, and then noting that the two police reports about the Walker shooting portray at least TWO shooters at Walker. Your innuendo is that the TWO shooters were probably Communists.

Well, that's exactly what General Walker thought. But there is another explanation, and I don't mean an explanation from leftists who try to blame the right-wing. I mean an explanation from a neutral American journalist named Dick Russell and his book, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1993).

Dick Russell was intrigued by the fact that General Walker had instigated the Ole Miss riots of 1962, and had been detained in an insane asylum by JFK and RFK on October 1, 1962 for a 90-day evaluation, but only served 5 days in that asylum. Then, in January, 1963, General Walker was acquitted of all charges involved with the Ole Miss riots. But he was now on the war path for the Kennedys and everything they stood for, including the United Nations.

General Walker played a major role in instigating the attacks on Adlai Stevenson in October, 1963 in Dallas, when he visited that city to promost the United Nations.

General Walker was also instrumental in publishing the WANTED FOR TREASON handbills against JFK (which were first distributed on 24 October 1963, at the Adlai Stevenson incident, before they were distributed on 22 November 1963.

General Walker was also instrumental (along with Larrie Schmidt) in publishing the 'WELCOME MR. KENNEDY' black-bordered ad in the Dallas Morning News that called JFK a Communist.

This came out in the Warren Commission. Many people believed Walker was involved in the JFK assassination on the day it happened -- this is not some new theory.

So, Dick Russell decided to dig into General Walker further. What he discovered was that two right-wing youths, Larrie and Bob Schmidt, were attempting to take over every right-wing organized group in Dallas. They had already taken over the National Indignation Convention (NIC), and the Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) in just six short months. They had been attempting to take over Edwin Walker's group, the American Eagle Publishing Company (AEPC), but General Walker was a slippery character.

For one thing, Walker did hire Bob Schmidt to be his chauffer, and Larrie Schmidt would visit his brother at the AEPC from time to time, but they were unable to make progress in taking over the operation. Bob Schmidt, further, was a drinking man.

Bob Schmidt confessed one week after the JFK assassination that he and his brother Larrie had befriended Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas, and they all three together decided to assassinate General Edwin Walker on 10 April 1963.

The cars that you described in your post, Bernice, correspond to the two cars owned by the Schmidt brothers. So, we have Bob's confession. We have an eye-witness of the cars. We have Oswald's confession to his wife. The evidence piles up.

The weakness in your argument, in my opinion, is that it presumes Oswald was a 'Castroite' when actually his known associates were all Marines and conservative people, like George De Mohrenschildt (once a Nazi spy) as well as Guy Banister, David Ferrie, Carlos Bringuier, Loran Hall, Larry Howard (two Cuban Exiles against Castro), and so on.

The weight of the evidence itself falls into the opposite argument, Bernice. The shooters at General Edwin Walker were probably right-wing pranksters.

Best regards,

--Paul Trejo

<edit typos>

Edited May 28, 2012 by Paul Trejo

[Bernice Moore]

hI paul; thank you for your information, i have read Russell's book, though some time now in the past,it is , was, a fantastic read.and perhaps time for a reread.....in case some have not read the information provided here on the forum re Larry Schmidt....fti..

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

Larrie Schmidt : Biography

[Paul Trejo]

hI paul; thank you for your information, i have read Russell's book, though some time now in the past,it is , was, a fantastic read.and perhaps time for a reread.....in case some have not read the information provided here on the forum re Larry Schmidt....fti..

http://www.spartacus.../JFKschmidt.htm

Larrie Schmidt : Biography

Bernice,

Thanks for posting the SPARTACUS bio on Larrie Schmidt, because it gives us an opportunity to expose its two main errors.

First, Larrie Schmidt didn't serve under General Walker in Germany. Larrie was stationed in Munich, while General Walker had command of the 24th Infantry Division in Augsburg. Now, their paths would cross sharply, but not in any friendly way.

General Walker was attempting to push John Birch Society materials on the US troops under his command. Larrie Schmidt was one of the newspaper guys working for the OVERSEAS WEEKLY. General Walker and the OVERSEAS WEEKLY came into sharp, hateful conflict in the first days that General Walker arrived, and it lasted until the final days of Walker's command in Germany.

Secondly, Larrie Schmidt did not develop his extreme rightist views from General Walker; on the contrary. Larrie Schmidt always told people that his hero was Hitler's Nazi Propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels. Larrie just loved everything about the Nazi Party, and he believed he could become a great rightist leader in the USA -- maybe even a dictator. (Well, he was a young man, so perhaps we should be a little bit tolerant.)

More to the point, Larrie Schmidt befriended a great American in Germany, namely, General Charles Willoughby, who had been the Chief of Intelligence for General Douglas MacArthur in World War II and in Korea. (So, really, why would the young Mr. Schmidt take a step down and bother with a mere two-star General like General Edwin Walker?)

General Willoughby was a fanatic rightist (also a born German) and thought Truman had shown his Communist credentials when Truman dismissed General MacArthur from his command in Korea. The elderly Willoughby was happy to take young Larrie Schmidt under his wing.

Furthermore, Larrie Schmidt seems to have lost any respect for General Edwin Walker, when General Walker began attacking the OVERSEAS WEEKLY, and officially requested that the Army ban that Army newspaper, on grounds that it had too many pin-up girls, and so was immoral and demoralizing to his Christian Troops. (This came out in a Senate Subcommittee hearing in 1962.)

So, the staff of the OVERSEAS WEEKLY -- presumably including General Willoughby and Larrie Schmidt, decided to teach General Walker a lesson he would never forget. They exposed his John Birch Society book program (which Walker proudly called the Pro-Blue indoctrination program) in a full page attack in the 16 April 1961 issue of OVERSEAS WEEKLY.

The scandal was immediate. The White House and the Pentagon jumped in their seats. General Edwin Walker was dismissed from his post the very next day -- 17 April 1961. That was that.

That part of the drama did not come out in the Warren Commission, but Dick Russell did a great job of uncovering all the dirt. My main point here is that even though they were *both* rightist fanatics, Larrie Schmidt was not a fan of General Walker, but on the contrary, wanted to squash him!

That is one reason that the Schmidt's tried to take over the American Eagle Publishing Company in 1962 and 1963. That is also a possible motive for the Schmidt brothers to try to assassinate General Walker -- and blame it on a Communist. If so, then this was their motive for involving Lee Harvey Oswald in their plan. (Not that Oswald was a Communist, but only that he was widely portrayed by the Dallas Press as a defector to the USSR and had a Russian wife -- which was suspicious enough for Dallas folks.)

Best regards,

--Paul Trejo

Edited May 29, 2012 by Paul Trejo

[Bernice Moore]

Thanks again Paul for the reread.....been a long time since i spent any time in Dallas with the likes of Schmidt and friends...here is a link, scroll down some, letters from Schmidt that you or some may be interested in..best and btw, thanks every so for being so prominent in bringing forth the truth about OUR HARRY ; that many of us knew ,believed and backed him for all these years, a tremendous job, so very well done, thanks again...b

http://www.officialb...thejfkfiles.htm

and the Weissman info here on the forum...

http://www.spartacus...FKweissmanB.htm

Edited May 29, 2012 by Bernice Moore

[Paul Trejo]

Thanks again Paul for the reread.....been a long time since i spent any time in Dallas with the likes of Schmidt and friends...here is a link, scroll down some, letters from Schmidt that you or some may be interested in..best and btw, thanks every so for being so prominent in bringing forth the truth about OUR HARRY ; that many of us knew ,believed and backed him for all these years, a tremendous job, so very well done, thanks again...b

http://www.officialb...thejfkfiles.htm

and the Weissman info here on the forum...

http://www.spartacus...FKweissmanB.htm

Bernice, your links for the 'Bohemian Club' video and for the Weissman biography, were interesting, so I'd like to comment.

(1) George De Mohrenschildt started his own 'Bohemian Club' in Dallas. Members would meet monthly with rotating hosts, and either dine out or eat at the hosts' home, and the host would make a speech, and then would follow a discussion on the topic. George's topic was the White Russian Community that opposed Stalin in WW2, which means they had to collaborate with Nazi Germany. (I think this tells us a lot about George DM's interests and personal identity.)

(2) As I recall, in another one of the Bohemian meetings, one of the members (very possibly Larrie Schmidt) gave a speech about the merits of Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister. I think that was Larrie Schmidt, because he was notorious among young Americans for singing the praises of Joseph Goebbels.

(3) But Larrie Schmidt was a young American, and although he was ambitious, he was also too tender-hearted to be a real Nazi. For example, one of the leaders of his rightist political organization, the CUSA, was a Jew, namely, Bernard Weissman. It would have been strictly impossible for any real Nazi to be best friends with a Jew. So, Larrie Schmidt was a conflicted character.

(4) In Dick Russell's, TMWKTM (2003 edition) there is a section on General Walker and Larrie Schmidt that is so interesting that I will quote a little bit here. The section starts on page 206, and it is entitled, "The Walker Shooting Revisited."

(5) First, there's a description of Larrie himself. Bradford P. Angers, a private detective and an employer of Larrie Schmidt in Dallas in 1963, described Larrie Schmidt as "a frail fellow, very meticulous...he's a helluva smart guy...He patterened himself after Joseph Goebbels. He and I used to talk about how Joseph Goebbels used syllogistic logic to build the Nazi empire."

(6) Bradford Angers continued, "Apparently this guy couldn't stand Walker. Neither could his brother."

(7) Given Bob Schmidt's story about he and Larrie and Lee Harvey Oswald joining forces to kill General Edwin Walker, this loosely implicates General Charles Willoughby (MacArthur's intelligence chief) and H.L. Hunt in the kill-Walker plot, because Willoughby and Hunt were also supporters of Larrie Schmidt, and contributed money to his cause.

(8) After the JFK assassination, Angers was asked to locate Larrie Schmidt, because the DPD had arrested Bernard Weissman for the 'black-bordered ad' (WELCOME MR. KENNEDY) and in turn Bernard Weissman gave them the name of Larrie Schmidt.

(9) Bradford Angers reported the following about the time he found Larrie. "I went to his apartment in Austin. His face was all bandaged up, he had his arms in splints and his wife had her leg in a cast...He told me that he and his wife had been picked up by the Secret Service. They were told if they even mentioned any relationship with the Kennedy assassination, or the Hunts, they'd be dead."

The Schmidt brothers' story, that they personally participated with Lee Harvey Oswald in shooting at General Edwin Walker, rings at least partially true with me, Bernice, because I can perceive no viable motive for inventing such a story. It also explains many questioned factors about the Walker shooting on 10 April 1963.

Best regards,

--Paul Trejo

<edit typos>

Edited June 11, 2012 by Paul Trejo

[Gene Kelly]

Paul:

The Walker intrigues do seem central to the real story surrounding Dealey Plaza, but seriously confuse me... right wing fanatics (rabid anti-Communists) attacking each other? Was Schmidt further right of Attilla the Hun (as they say)? It seems both parties - Walker/JBS/Minutemen and Schmidt/Willloughy/Hunt - had the same agenda and interests. Why would they attack or discredit each other? Its a difficult scenario to follow.

What is clear is that Walker did a lot of overt things to attack Kennedy's character...almost too obvious and traceable. He had cetainly been embarrassed and denigrated by both Kennedys, and therefore had a strong motive for revenge. But given his acts leading up to the assassination, how could he expect to be protected and seen innocent in the days following? Surely he'd know the poster, Stevenson, and the handbills could be easily traced back to him... too obvious, for such an extreme act, in my opinion.

The shooting... is it real or staged? As I read this thread, the scene described in his home afterwards (bullet narrowly missed, hole in wall, boxes, a suspicious car, picket fence, questiobale ballistics, lack of FBI followup) immediately reminded me of the 6th floor of the TSBD. A manufactured crime scene. Before I even had time to reflect, it came into focus... like that initial answer to a test question that is usually the best answer. That both Oswald and Schmidt would conspire to actually want Walker dead strains credibility. Kind of like Nixon's gestapo reporting after the George Wallace shooting that Arthur Bremer was going to kill Nixon... a planted reverse psychology. Oswald was everybody's patsy... blame it all on a communist.

Gene

[Paul Trejo]

Paul:

The Walker intrigues do seem central to the real story surrounding Dealey Plaza, but seriously confuse me... right wing fanatics (rabid anti-Communists) attacking each other? Was Schmidt further right of Attilla the Hun (as they say)? It seems both parties - Walker/JBS/Minutemen and Schmidt/Willloughy/Hunt - had the same agenda and interests. Why would they attack or discredit each other? Its a difficult scenario to follow.

What is clear is that Walker did a lot of overt things to attack Kennedy's character...almost too obvious and traceable. He had cetainly been embarrassed and denigrated by both Kennedys, and therefore had a strong motive for revenge. But given his acts leading up to the assassination, how could he expect to be protected and seen innocent in the days following? Surely he'd know the poster, Stevenson, and the handbills could be easily traced back to him... too obvious, for such an extreme act, in my opinion.

The shooting... is it real or staged? As I read this thread, the scene described in his home afterwards (bullet narrowly missed, hole in wall, boxes, a suspicious car, picket fence, questiobale ballistics, lack of FBI followup) immediately reminded me of the 6th floor of the TSBD. A manufactured crime scene. Before I even had time to reflect, it came into focus... like that initial answer to a test question that is usually the best answer. That both Oswald and Schmidt would conspire to actually want Walker dead strains credibility. Kind of like Nixon's gestapo reporting after the George Wallace shooting that Arthur Bremer was going to kill Nixon... a planted reverse psychology. Oswald was everybody's patsy... blame it all on a communist.

Gene

Gene, thanks for considering this topic further. There is too little information about this case, but the most fascinating thing that I perceive about the 'April Crime' as General Edwin Walker put it, is that General Walker never let this topic alone as long as he lived. Down to the last newspaper article he ever submitted, this topic was his life long obsession.

Here's a link to the last newspaper article I've been able to find: http://www.pet880.co...ld_arrested.pdf

Notice the date: 1992 -- the year before Walker died. The topic, once again, is the same topic that Walker submitted to the rightist German newspaper, Deutsche-Nationalzeitung, the morning after JFK was assassinated, namely, that Oswald was arrested and then released on 10 April 1963.

As for your question about why one right-wing group would ever attack another right-wing group, it sounds rhetorical in the face of reality. In that German article, for example, the interviewer, Haslo Thorsten (probably a pen-name for Helmut Muench) expressed his doubts that a Communist (Oswald) would ever shoot another Communist (JFK).

However, Dick Russell interviewed General Walker in 1992 and asked him if he believed it was plausible that Larrie Schmidt, a rightist leader, would ever participate in a plot to kill the righist legend, General Walker. Walker's reply was (in my paraphrase), "Yes, I do! In fact, I was told that he did! And actually, those were strange times, when right wing groups were competing for position with each other!" (Russell, TMWKTM).

Larrie Schmidt had also boasted to his PI employer in Dallas that he, Larrie, was the one who got General Walker dismissed from his Command over the 24th Infantry Division in Augsburg, Germany. Evidently, Larrie was associated with the US Army newspaper, Overseas Weekly, and held some sort of grudge against Walker -- it is unclear exactly what it was. It might have been because of Walker's repeated efforts to ban the Overseas Weekly from news stands in Germany (Russell, TMWKTM).

So, politics is politics, no Party and certainly no wing of politics, is completely harmonious within itself.

You ask a good question, Gene -- given Walker's open animosity toward JFK, how could he escape suspicion after the JFK assassination? The quick answer is, of course, that Walker was a suspect in the first hours after the assassination, until Oswald was captured and took all the headlines. There are still some newspaper articles from that week that tried to remind the public about Walker's reputation.

However, Walker was not in Dallas that day -- and for some reason this tends to eliminate suspicion on the part of the majority. Besides that, Walker was once charged with leading a violent insurrection on the Ole Miss campus on 30 September 1962, a crime of which he was certainly guilty, and a crime which caused hundreds to be wounded and two to be killed. Yet Walker was promptly acquitted of that crime. The politics of the day (especially in Mississippi) would be unthinkable in 2012.

Add to this fact that Walker was certainly guilty of instigating the attack on Adlai Stevenson (a fact amply documented by Chris Cravens in his well-known 1992 dissertation on Walker). Yet again, because Walker was not at the scene of that crime, he got away with it.

Walker, a World War 2 hero and a General in Korea, was accustomed to getting his way. He was frustrated in 1962 by his loss in the race to be the Governor of Texas, and also by his poor showing at the Senate Subcommittee hearings about his Pro-Blue program versus the Overseas Weekly, and especially by his failure to prevent the racial integration of Ole Miss university (and his humiliating five-day stint in an insane asylum, courtesy of the Kennedy brothers). That was the worst year of his life, as far as I can see.

Walker entered 1963 as a raging lion -- and then came the assassination attempt at his own home. We should not forget that Walker was amply hated by the left wing (e.g. Gus Hall and his CPUSA), but also by moderates and liberals in America (like Michael Paine, Volkmar Schmidt and George De Mohrenshildt). These latter folks worked directly and relentlessly on Lee Oswald, to ensure that he also hated Walker (specifically for the Ole Miss riots and for walking away without a scratch).

Now we must add to this the rightist competition from young, ambitious hotheads like Larrie Schmidt, whose stated aim was to be the Fuehrer of the USA. It is plausible, and there is enough evidence to take this line of thought seriously. I personally find nothing to suggest that the Walker shooting was staged. It happened. What role it plays in the JFK assassination, however, is hotly debated.

Best regards,

--Paul Trejo

Edited June 13, 2012 by Paul Trejo