George Smathers

Ron Ecker · July 6, 2004

In an old file I came across an article clipped from the 11/21/93 Gainesville (FL) Sun (“A Special Friendship,” by Mitch Stacy) based on an interview of former Senator George Smathers, then 80.

The most interesting portions:

“That’s the Monday when he said to me, ‘God, I hate to go to Dallas,’ recalls Smathers. “And I said, ‘You got to go because Lyndon would never speak to you again.’ Lyndon didn’t like him anyway.”

One touchy issue for Smathers as a lawmaker in the conservative South was civil rights, which Kennedy championed. Smathers says that backing civil rights at the time was as bad as being a communist as far as many voters in North Florida were concerned.

“I was telling him to go slow,” Smathers remembers. “He didn’t need to be told to do it. . . I was just saying, go slow; don’t run off all your votes in the South.”

Smathers learned of Kennedy’s death via a radio report as he was flying in a private plane from Jacksonville to a vacation spot in Georgia.

“It was a sad, sad day,” he says. “I talk about it some days, and tears come to my eyes, and I have to watch myself so I don’t cry. But it was a terrifically bad blow.”

Anthony Frank · July 6, 2004

Thanks Ron....

The civil rights movement had grown through the 1950s and was reaching its height by 1963, but Barry Goldwater, as a segregationist, opposed it and Goldwater’s support was mainly in the South, where civil rights and integration were vehemently opposed. Exploiting the racial tension was the conspirator’s primary focus to incite the masses and cause turmoil in the United States.

The fact that 100 years earlier the United States was embroiled in a civil war over the rights of African-Americans was undoubtedly not lost on them.

As I pointed out more than once, if they had succeeded in killing Johnson on October 31, 1964, then Barry Goldwater would have won the election three days later.

Before they killed Kennedy, Goldwater's supporters contended that he would "sweep the South." If they assassinated Johnson, liberal Representative John W. McCormack of Massachusetts would have become President and would not have taken one state in the South, nor would he have won the electoral prize of California, the state that was conservative enough in the mid-1960s to elect Ronald Reagan as its Governor.

You made a very good point with regards to Kennedy, the South, and civil rights.

Tony

John Simkin · July 7, 2004

In an old file I came across an article clipped from the 11/21/93 Gainesville (FL) Sun (“A Special Friendship,” by Mitch Stacy) based on an interview of former Senator George Smathers, then 80.

I am very interested in the role played by George Smathers in the assassination. Although he claims to have been JFK’s friend, he had long ceased to have supported him and appears to have been LBJ’s man (Smathers was definitely closer to LBJ political views).

I am also interested in George Smathers relationship with Bobby Baker and Fred Black (the Serve-U Corporation).

Smathers was also the man who was trying to link the Kennedys with the death of Marilyn Monroe. At the time of the assassination of JFK his secretary was Mary Jo Kopechne.

For more on Smathers see:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=943

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

Anthony Frank · July 7, 2004

Having been a Senator from Florida for 12 years before Kennedy was assassinated, Smathers sounds very much like a Goldwater supporter. Just like the two Democrats on the Warren Warren Commission; Senator Richard B. Russell of Georgia and Congressman Hale Boggs of Louisiana.

Louisiana, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina, were the five Southern segregationist states that went to Barry Goldwater in 1964, the only five states to go to Goldwater other than his home state of Arizona, even though Johnson was looked upon favorably in the South.

Smathers was probably glad to have Johnson as President in 1963, but he would have been happier to have segregationist Barry Goldwater in 1964.

John Simkin · April 22, 2006

It could be argued that George Smathers is one of the most interesting characters linked to the assassination still alive.

Smathers formed a business partnership with Grant Stockdale. Their company, Automatic Vending, was involved in providing vending machines to government institutions. However, in 1961 Automatic Vending was sued for improper actions in getting a contract at Aerodex. As a result, Stockdale was forced to resign as Ambassador to Ireland.

William Torbitt (Nonmenclature of an Assassination Cabal ), claims that George Smathers and Grant Stockdale were involved with Bobby Baker, Fred Black and mobsters Ed Levenson and Benny Sigelbaum in a company called Serve-U-Corporation. Established in 1962, the company provided vending machines for companies working on federally granted programs. The machines were manufactured by a company secretly owned by Sam Giancana and other mobsters based in Chicago. We now know this is true. Smathers and Stockdale used a frontman, Eugene Hancock, as president of Serve-U-Corporation.

On 26th November, Grant Stockdale flew to Washington and talked with Robert Kennedy and Edward Kennedy. On his return Stockdale told several of his friends that "the world was closing in." On 1st December, he spoke to his attorney, William Frates who later recalled: "He started talking. It didn't make much sense. He said something about 'those guys' trying to get him. Then about the assassination."

Grant Stockdale died on 2nd December, 1963 when he fell (or was pushed) from his office on the thirteenth story of the Dupont Building in Miami. Stockdale did not leave a suicide note but Smathers, claimed that he had become depressed as a result of the death of JFK.

Stockdale's wife told a similar story but in 2004 his daughter told a very different story: "The Military Complex didn't want the American People to realize (and still don't ) that they were calling the shots. Daddy knew he was being followed... & he told Mom that they were going to get him... and they did. There was an attempt on my life also several days after Daddy's funeral . I realize now that this was a scare tactic to silence my Mother... i.e. if you speak about anything, Your kids are dead. It worked!!"

.

Thomas H. Purvis · April 22, 2006

It could be argued that George Smathers is one of the most interesting characters linked to the assassination still alive.
Smathers formed a business partnership with Grant Stockdale. Their company, Automatic Vending, was involved in providing vending machines to government institutions. However, in 1961 Automatic Vending was sued for improper actions in getting a contract at Aerodex. As a result, Stockdale was forced to resign as Ambassador to Ireland.

William Torbitt (Nonmenclature of an Assassination Cabal ), claims that George Smathers and Grant Stockdale were involved with Bobby Baker, Fred Black and mobsters Ed Levenson and Benny Sigelbaum in a company called Serve-U-Corporation. Established in 1962, the company provided vending machines for companies working on federally granted programs. The machines were manufactured by a company secretly owned by Sam Giancana and other mobsters based in Chicago. We now know this is true. Smathers and Stockdale used a frontman, Eugene Hancock, as president of Serve-U-Corporation.

On 26th November, Grant Stockdale flew to Washington and talked with Robert Kennedy and Edward Kennedy. On his return Stockdale told several of his friends that "the world was closing in." On 1st December, he spoke to his attorney, William Frates who later recalled: "He started talking. It didn't make much sense. He said something about 'those guys' trying to get him. Then about the assassination."

Grant Stockdale died on 2nd December, 1963 when he fell (or was pushed) from his office on the thirteenth story of the Dupont Building in Miami. Stockdale did not leave a suicide note but Smathers, claimed that he had become depressed as a result of the death of JFK.

Stockdale's wife told a similar story but in 2004 his daughter told a very different story: "The Military Complex didn't want the American People to realize (and still don't ) that they were calling the shots. Daddy knew he was being followed... & he told Mom that they were going to get him... and they did. There was an attempt on my life also several days after Daddy's funeral . I realize now that this was a scare tactic to silence my Mother... i.e. if you speak about anything, Your kids are dead. It worked!!"

.

"Pawley continued to be involved in various business projects. He was a close friend of President Rafael Trujillo and together with George Smathers, had invested in the bauxite industry in the Dominican Republic. He was also extremely friendly with Fulgencio Batista and in 1948 he established Autobuses Modernos in Cuba"

"And, since Mr. George Smathers was one of the co-founders and financial sponsors who secured a million dollars in 1945 to construct the "New" La Gorce Country Club in Miami Beach, Fl, then we must assume that Mr. Smathers was well acquainted with Mr. William D. Pawley who was also one of these founding financial members.

Along with Hugh Purvis and the attorney George Sally."

Mr. Sally was a principal lawyer in representation of the "Sugar" interests.

John Simkin · April 23, 2006

Namesbase entry for George Smathers:

http://www.namebase.org/main2/George-A-Smathers.html

Anderson,J. Peace, War, and Politics. 1999 (111, 152)

Andrew,J. Power to Destroy. 2002 (170, 226-7)

Blumenthal,S. Yazijian,H. Government by Gunplay. 1976 (141)

Bradlee,B. A Good Life. 1995 (233)

Brewton,P. The Mafia, CIA, and George Bush. 1992 (328)

Colby,G. DuPont Dynasty. 1984 (534-6)

Denton,S. Morris,R. The Money and the Power. 2001 (204-5)

Domhoff,G.W. The Higher Circles. 1971 (350)

Escalante,F. The Secret War. 1995 (186)

Furgurson,E. Hard Right: The Rise of Jesse Helms. 1986 (50)

Goulden,J. The Superlawyers. 1972 (254, 268-73)

Groden,R. Livingstone,H. High Treason. 1990 (321-2, 325)

Guardian (New York) 1985-10-09 (3)

Hersh,S. The Dark Side of Camelot. 1997 (24, 103-5, 153-4, 198, 200, 234, 301-2, 433)

Hershman,D.J. Power Beyond Reason. 2002 (102)

Hinckle,W. Turner,W. The Fish is Red. 1981 (70-1, 163, 290, 297-8, 340)

Hutchison,R. Vesco. 1976 (329)

Immerman,R. The CIA in Guatemala. 1982 (4)

Kessler,R. The Sins of the Father. 1997 (285-6, 339-40, 355, 360-1)

Lasky,V. It Didn't Start With Watergate. 1978 (17, 99)

Lernoux,P. In Banks We Trust. 1984 (164-5)

Lundberg,F. The Rich and the Super-Rich. 1969 (632, 643)

Messick,H. Lansky. 1973 (188-92, 244)

Messick,H. Of Grass and Snow. 1979 (171)

Mintz,M. Cohen,J. Power, Inc. 1977 (591)

Moldea,D. Interference. 1989 (286)

Moldea,D. The Hoffa Wars. 1978 (105)

Myerson,M. Watergate: Crime in the Suites. 1973 (172)

NACLA. Guatemala. 1974 (84)

National Reporter 1985-W (19)

O'Toole,G. The Private Sector. 1978 (31)

Oglesby,C. The Yankee and Cowboy War. 1976 (35-7, 53)

Rolling Stone 1976-05-20 (42, 92)

Sale,K. Power Shift. 1976 (126, 196, 219, 223-6, 306)

Scott,P.D. Crime and Coverup. 1977 (38)

Scott,P.D... The Assassinations: Dallas and Beyond. 1976 (378-80, 397, 404-5)

Summers,A. Official and Confidential. 1993 (203, 270, 347)

Summers,A. The Arrogance of Power. 2000 (100-1, 111, 181, 201)

Thomas,K. Keith,J. The Octopus. 1996 (30)

Truell,P. Gurwin,L. False Profits. 1992 (44-5)

Turner,W. Rearview Mirror. 2001 (144, 213)

Washington Post 1984-03-12 (A4)

Weissman,S. Big Brother and the Holding Company. 1974 (168, 253-7, 262, 286)

Winter-Berger,R. The Washington Pay-Off. 1972 (199)

Wyden,P. Bay of Pigs. 1979 (27)

Mark Carter · April 23, 2006

To say that John Kennedy was a champion of civil rights is highly questionable. I just watched a television show not top long ago where Black people were complaining about his civil rights record.

Thomas H. Purvis · April 24, 2006

Namesbase entry for George Smathers:
http://www.namebase.org/main2/George-A-Smathers.html

Anderson,J. Peace, War, and Politics. 1999 (111, 152)

Andrew,J. Power to Destroy. 2002 (170, 226-7)

Blumenthal,S. Yazijian,H. Government by Gunplay. 1976 (141)

Bradlee,B. A Good Life. 1995 (233)

Brewton,P. The Mafia, CIA, and George Bush. 1992 (328)

Colby,G. DuPont Dynasty. 1984 (534-6)

Denton,S. Morris,R. The Money and the Power. 2001 (204-5)

Domhoff,G.W. The Higher Circles. 1971 (350)

Escalante,F. The Secret War. 1995 (186)

Furgurson,E. Hard Right: The Rise of Jesse Helms. 1986 (50)

Goulden,J. The Superlawyers. 1972 (254, 268-73)

Groden,R. Livingstone,H. High Treason. 1990 (321-2, 325)

Guardian (New York) 1985-10-09 (3)

Hersh,S. The Dark Side of Camelot. 1997 (24, 103-5, 153-4, 198, 200, 234, 301-2, 433)

Hershman,D.J. Power Beyond Reason. 2002 (102)

Hinckle,W. Turner,W. The Fish is Red. 1981 (70-1, 163, 290, 297-8, 340)

Hutchison,R. Vesco. 1976 (329)

Immerman,R. The CIA in Guatemala. 1982 (4)

Kessler,R. The Sins of the Father. 1997 (285-6, 339-40, 355, 360-1)

Lasky,V. It Didn't Start With Watergate. 1978 (17, 99)

Lernoux,P. In Banks We Trust. 1984 (164-5)

Lundberg,F. The Rich and the Super-Rich. 1969 (632, 643)

Messick,H. Lansky. 1973 (188-92, 244)

Messick,H. Of Grass and Snow. 1979 (171)

Mintz,M. Cohen,J. Power, Inc. 1977 (591)

Moldea,D. Interference. 1989 (286)

Moldea,D. The Hoffa Wars. 1978 (105)

Myerson,M. Watergate: Crime in the Suites. 1973 (172)

NACLA. Guatemala. 1974 (84)

National Reporter 1985-W (19)

O'Toole,G. The Private Sector. 1978 (31)

Oglesby,C. The Yankee and Cowboy War. 1976 (35-7, 53)

Rolling Stone 1976-05-20 (42, 92)

Sale,K. Power Shift. 1976 (126, 196, 219, 223-6, 306)

Scott,P.D. Crime and Coverup. 1977 (38)

Scott,P.D... The Assassinations: Dallas and Beyond. 1976 (378-80, 397, 404-5)

Summers,A. Official and Confidential. 1993 (203, 270, 347)

Summers,A. The Arrogance of Power. 2000 (100-1, 111, 181, 201)

Thomas,K. Keith,J. The Octopus. 1996 (30)

Truell,P. Gurwin,L. False Profits. 1992 (44-5)

Turner,W. Rearview Mirror. 2001 (144, 213)

Washington Post 1984-03-12 (A4)

Weissman,S. Big Brother and the Holding Company. 1974 (168, 253-7, 262, 286)

Winter-Berger,R. The Washington Pay-Off. 1972 (199)

Wyden,P. Bay of Pigs. 1979 (27)

Which, would appear to be somewhat lacking!

Mark Knight · May 7, 2006

To say that John Kennedy was a champion of civil rights is highly questionable. I just watched a television show not top long ago where Black people were complaining about his civil rights record.

Kennedy had a pro-civil rights agenda, but he was also a political pragmatist. Kennedy knew--or was advised--that pursuing too much change too quickly would cause a backlash among white southerners, resulting in tremendous losses in '64 in the south. While Brown vs. Board of Education was the law of the land, as the 10th anniversary of the ruling approached, it was painfully obvious--more painfully to those who met "Bull" Connor's dogs and thugs and fire hoses than to many others--that progress in achieving de facto compliance with the Supreme Court ruling was achingly slow in coming. The folks most affected thus found Kennedy's "actions" on civil rights to be closer to "inactions."

Pure speculation here, but a second Kennedy term might have accelerated his pace on pursuing a civil rights aenda. After all, because of term limits on the presidency, there would be no more voters for JFK to alienate, with the exception of possible future RFK voters, in the south. And although historians over look it, a case can be made that Nixon's victory in the presidential election of 1968 can be in part attributed to Hubert Humphrey's perceived position as a stand-in candidate for the interests of LBJ, the president who championed and signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. That probably wasn't the PRIMARY reason for Humphrey's defeat, but in the minds of some Vietnam War "hawks," it was probably a contributing factor.

Carl Oglesby · October 18, 2006

Nixon is commonly supposed to have been introduced to Bebe Rebozo by Richard Danner, the courier and connecter who left the FBI to become city manager of Miami Beach at. a time when it was under the all-but-open control of the Mob. Danner first met Nixon at a party thrown in Washington in 1947 by another newly elected congressman, George Smathers. Smathers was by that time already an intimate friend and business partner of Rebozo and a friend of Batista. When Nixon vacationed in Havana after his 1952 election to the vice-presidency, Syndicate-wise Danner used his clout with Lansky's man Norman "Roughhouse" Rothman to get gambling credit at the Sans Souci for Nixon's traveling companion, Dana Smith. We recall Dana , Smith as the manager of the secret slush fund set up to finance Pat Nixon's cloth coats, the exposure of which led to the famous Checkers TV speech during the 1952 campaign. Smith dropped a bundle at the Sans Souci and left Cuba: without paying it back. Safe in the States, he repudiated the debt. That infuriated Rothman. Nixon was forced to ask the State Department to intervene in Smith's behalf.

It is poetically satisfying to imagine Nixon and Rebozo meeting through Danner. When Danner reenters in the next to last act of Watergate with the $100,000 from Hughes which only he seems to have been able to deliver, we may sense a wheel coming full circle. But there is the possibility also that Rebozo and Nixon actually connected in Miami in 1942, and it is almost certain that they knew of each other then, as will emerge.

Here are the fragments with which we reconstruct Rebozo: (1) he is associated with the anti-Castro Cuban exile community in Florida; (2) an all-Cuban shopping center in Miami is constructed for him by Polizzi Construction Co., headed by Cleveland Mafioso Al "The Owl" Polizzi, listed by the McClellan crime committee as one of "the most influential members of the underworld in. the United States"; (3) his Key Biscayne Bank was involved in the E. F. Hutton stock theft, in which the Mafia fenced stolen securities through his bank.

Rebozo's will to power appears to have developed during the war, when he made it big in the "used-tire" and "retread'' business. Used-tire distributors all over the country; of course, were willingly and unwillingly turned into fences of Mafia black market tires during the war. Rebozo could have been used and still not know it.

He was born in 1912 in Florida to a family of poor Cuban immigrants, was ambitious, and by 1935 had his first gas station. By the time the war was over, his lucrative retread business had turned him into a capitalist and he was buying up Florida land. Before long he was buying vast amounts of it in partnership with Smathers and spreading thence into the small-loans business, sometimes called loan-sharking. From lending he went to insuring. He and Smathers insured each other's business operations. His successes soon carried him to the sphere of principalities and powers the likes of W. Clement Stone of Chicago and the aerosol king Robert Abplanalp, both of whom met Nixon through him. Also during the war, Rebozo was navigator in a part-time Military Air Transport Command crew that flew military transports to Europe full and back empty, which some find a Minderbinderesque detail.

During the first year of the war, before going into the Navy, Nixon worked in the interpretations unit of the legal section of the tire-rationing branch of the Office of Price Administration. Investigator Jeff Gerth has discovered that three weeks after Nixon began this job, his close friend-to¬-be, George Smathers, came to federal court for the defendant in this case, United States vs. Standard Oil of Kansas. U.S. Customs had confiscated a load of American-made tires reentering the country through Cuba in an "attempt to circumvent national tire rationing," i.e., bootleg tires. Smathers wanted to speed up the case for his client, and so wrote to the OPA for a ruling. His letter must have come to Nixon, who, OPA records show, was responsible for all correspondence on tire rationing questions. It was therefore Nixon's business to answer Smathers. Especially since this was the first knock on the door, it would be nice to know what Nixon said and how the matter was disposed of. "Unfortunately," reports Gerth, "most OPA records were destroyed after the war. The court file for this case is supposed to be in the Atlanta Records Center, but a written request submitted to the clerk of the civil court on July 6, 1972, has not been honored, despite the usual one week response time. Written questions submitted to President Nixon and Bebe Robozo have also gone unanswered. Among the relevant questions is whether Miami was one of the regional offices Nixon set up.

Was this the bending of the twig? And if Rebozo and Nixon actually did meet then, even if only through bureaucratic transactions around the flow of tires, then they met within the sphere of intense Syndicate activity at a time when Roosevelt's Operation Underworld had conferred immense prestige and freedom of movement on Syndicate activities. Could the Nixon-Rebozo relationship escape being affected by FDR's truce between law arid crime?

Let us spell out this theory of Nixon's beginnings in A-B-C simplicity.

Prohibition: Organized crime takes over the distilleries industry.

Repeal: Bootlegging goes legit, the Syndicate thereby expanding into the sphere of "legal" operations. This is the first big foothold of organized crime in the operations of the state.

Cuba/Batista: Lansky goes to Cuba in 1934 in search of a molasses source, meets and courts the newly ascendant strongman Batista, stays three weeks and lays plans for developing Havana into the major off-shore freezone of State-side organized crime, Cuba playing the role in the Caribbean of Sicily and Corsica in the Mediterranean.

World War II: In despair of otherwise securing the physical security of the docks against sabotage which may or may not have been Fascist-inspired, Roosevelt accepts a secret arrangement with organized crime. He comforts Luciano in prison and agrees to release him to exile at the end of the war. He generates an atmosphere of coalition with crime for the duration. In that atmosphere, Syndicate projects prosper. But one of the smugglers, Kansas Standard, gets too brazen and is caught, perhaps, by naive customs officials. Smathers takes the case for the defendant and thus comes into contact with Nixon.

Noting Gerth's discovery that the records of this case have inexplicably disappeared from the files, noting Rebozo's involvement in the tire business and his rapid enrichment during World War II, and noting Smathers's well-known affection for Cuban associations, we generalize to the straight-forward hypothesis that Nixon may have been fused to the Syndicate already in 1942. Was his 1944 stint in the Navy a sheep-dipping? Look at this rise: 1946: Nixon for Congress; 1948: Nixon for Congress (II); 1950: Nixon for Senate; 1952: a heartbeat away.

So it is another Dr. Frankenstein story. The Yankees beget in sheer expediency and offhandedness the forces that will later grow strong enough to challenge them for leadership. Operation Underworld was the supreme pioneering joint effort of crime and the state, the first major direct step taken toward their ultimate covert integration in the Dallas-Watergate decade.

Carl Oglesby · October 18, 2006