Joachim Joesten Options

[John Simkin]

In my opinion Joachim Joesten is one of the heroes of the investigation into the assassination of JFK. He was also one of the first to discover what the CIA would do to those who questioned the Warren Commission report.

Joachim Joesten, the son of a doctor, was born in Germany on 29th June, 1907. He attended Nancy University in France and the University of Madrid in Spain. He returned to Berlin where he worked as a journalist for the Weltbuehne. Joesten was also an active member of the German Communist Party.

After Adolf Hitler gained power Joesten emigrated to France. Later he moved to Denmark. His first book, Denmark's Day of Doom, was published by Victor Gollancz (a socialist publisher in London) in 1939.

When the German Army arrived in Denmark on 9th April, 1940, Joesten fled to Sweden. After marrying May Nilsson, Joesten and his wife emigrated to the United States. Soon after arriving in New York, Joesten joined Newsweek magazine. In 1944 he became a freelance writer. Books by Joesten include Nasser: The Rise to Power (1960), The Red Hand (1962) and Spies and Spy Techniques since World War II (1963).

Joesten took a keen interest in the assassination of JFK. He wrote in New Times (23rd September 23, 1964):

"Americans await the long-delayed report of the Warren Commission on President Kennedy’s assassination. Indications are that it will adhere to the FBI-police version that Kennedy was murdered by a lone operator, Lee Oswald, for no rational reason. Most Europeans, and many politically-oriented Americans, believe otherwise. The suspect Kennedy was the victim of a Rightist political plot.

Unofficial investigators have done much research. The Buchanan book attracted much attention in Europe, but was kept from significant circulation in the United States. Attorney Mark Lane, former member of the N.Y. State Legislature, has been the leading advocate of a real investigation."

Joesten and Buchanan were both accused of being pro-communist and possibly KGB agents. (Tim Gratz is still using this tactic.) Joesten's career took a downturn as like Buchanan, he became a blacklisted writer. As someone who had been blacklisted in Nazi Germany, it was not the first time that Joesten had suffered from right-wing extremists.

Joesten published "Oswald, Assassin or Fall Guy?" in 1964. Like other early authors who questioned the official version, Joesten was forced to get his book published in the England (Merlin Press). In the book Joesten claimed that the Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Dallas Police Department and a group of right-wing Texas oil millionaires conspired to kill Kennedy. He openly accused Police Chief Jesse Curry of being one of the key figures in the assassination.

Other books by Joesten on the subject included Marina Oswald (1967), Oswald: The Truth (1967) and The Garrison Enquiry: Truth & Consequences (1967) and How Kennedy was Killed: The Full Appalling Story (1968). In the book he provided information that Haroldson L. Hunt was involved in the assassination. Joesten also argued that Ruby was murdered on 3rd January, 1967.

Joesten later took the view that Lyndon B. Johnson and Bobby Baker were involved in the killing: "The Baker scandal then is truly the hidden key to the assassination, or more exact, the timing of the Baker affair crystallized the more or less vague plans to eliminate Kennedy which had already been in existence the threat of complete exposure which faced Johnson in the Baker scandal provided that final impulse he was forced to give the go-ahead signal to the plotters who had long been waiting for the right opportunity."

Joesten's best book is the The Dark Side of Lyndon Baines Johnson (1968). He was the first person to link Clifton Carter, Billie Sol Estes and Lyndon Johnson to the murders of Henry Marshall, George Krutilek, Harold Orr, and Coleman Wade. This view was of course supported by Billie Sol Estes testimony in 1983.

This is indeed a very powerful book. It is also difficult to obtain and so I will be posting extracts on the Forum. The book also includes some interesting extracts from American newspapers reporting on the JFK assassination and the corruption of LBJ.

[John Simkin]

Joachim Joesten book, Oswald: Assassin or Fail Guy? was first published by a left-wing publisher, Merlin Press, in London. Soon afterwards it was published by Manzani & Munsell in New York. The book was published before the Warren Commission report and immediately the CIA began a smear campaign against the author and the publishers. Newspaper editors were informed that the American publisher, Carl Manzani, was a former member of the American Communist Party whereas Joesten had been a communist activist in Nazi Germany.

The CIA attempted to convince the Warren Commission that Joesten was an unreliable source. Here is a copy of a letter sent by Richard Helms (Deputy Director for Plans) to J. Lee Rankin, General Counsel of the Warren Commission on 1st October, 1964. Interestingly, Helms tries to smear Joesten by providing evidence that in 1936 he was being sought by the Gestapo. One can understand why the CIA was concerned that an anti-fascist was investigating the JFK assassination.

1. Attached are reproduced copies of a set of German documents seized by the U.S. authorities at the end of World War II. The documents concern Joachtm J0ESTEN, author of Oswald. Assassin or Fail Guy?, Marzani & Munsell Publishers, Inc., 1964. The captured documents in this set range in dates from July 1936 to November 1937 and contain the statement that JOESTEN had been a member of the Communist Party of Germany since 1932. You will note that the attention of the German security organs was directed at JOESTEN as early as 1936. At that time the Communist Party had been 'outlawed in Germany and the German authorities apparently had begun collecting information about JOESTEN and his activities. Their investigation seems to have culminated in the proposal for revocation of his German citizenship.

2. A two page memorandum, dated 8 November 1937, prepared by the Gestapo, included in essence all of the facts provided in the other documents in the set. Therefore, we have translated that memorandum and are attaching the translation.

[John Simkin]

Joesten appears to have been the first investigator to link the death of Grant Stockdale to the JFK assassination:

On December 2. 1963, an AP dispatch from Miami reported:

'Grant Stockdale, former Ambassador to Ireland, plunged to his death todtiy from his offices on the 13th floor of the du Pont Building.

'The police said Mr. Stockdale, an intimate friend of President Kennedy, had committed suicide. No notes were found, however. Mr. Stockdale was 48 years old...'

Note that Stockdale, according to this dispatch, did not jump out of his office window, as suicides normally do. He 'plunged to his death', a conveniently ambiguous statement that is frequently used when a person dies by a fall from a window and the authorities just don't know for sure (or don't want to say) whether the victim had jumped or had been pushed out of the window.

With no eyewitnesses in the case, and no notes suggesting suicidal intent, how could the Miami police come out with a flat statement that Stockdale had committed suicide? Or did the Associated Press lend an unquestioning note to a somewhat less affirmative police statement? The question must be raised because The New York Herald Tribune in a dispatch from Washington by Dom Bonafede, published on December 3, 1963, stated: 'Police said it was an apparent suicide.'

'Miami police investigators, however, were unable to find a suicide note or provide any motive,' the Herald Tribune dispatch went on to say.

No motive. But the unnatural death of a prominent personality has to be explained somehow to the public. And so we are promptly treated to a variety of 'explanations', one more implausible than the other.

The AP dispatch cited above hints strongly that Grant Stockdale - a very rich man-had run into financial troubles, but substantiates this suggestion with ridiculous assertions:

'In a recent newspaper interview, he (Stockdale) said that he had borne heavy expenses by serving as Ambassador...'

Stockdale's appointment as ambassador to Ireland, made by President Kennedy in March 1961, was a typical political payoff, such as follow traditionally all changes in the Administration. Stockdale was not a career diplomat. His principal qualifications for the job were his services to the Democratic Party, his great personal wealth and the fact that he was a practising Roman Catholic. The latter circumstance, incidentally, makes the suicide version look even more improbable than it would otherwise be, for the Catholic Church strongly condemns suicides and inexorably relegates them to hell.

Ambassadorial appointments like that of Grant Stockdale are made primarily for two reasons: in order to reward a faithful party stalwart for substantial campaign contributions and because the nominee can afford to supplement his salary with personal income in order to meet the expenses of diplomatic high living. No rich man appointed to a political ambassadorship ever went broke in the service. The suggestion that the religious Stockdale, having ruined himself in the service of his country, saw no other way out than to commit the sin of sins is simply ludicrous.

Aware of it, apparently, the AP dispatch adds some other possible sources of financial despair:

'When he left Ireland to return to his real estate business in July, 1962, Mr. Stockdale said, he found that the market had declined badly. He also spoke of the great expense of a large family. He had two sons and three daugthers.'

If Seockdale found in July, 1962, that business had declined so badly that he could no longer afford to raise a large family, why did he wait another 17 months to jump out the window? And, what other big real estate operator was wiped out by the alleged 'decline' of the market between early 1961 and mid-1962?

All this is just plainly absurd, and the most preposterous of all is the suicide motive Dorn Bonafede managed to dig up: 'Miarni friends said yesterday that Mr. Stockdale, who was in the real estate and investment business, was despondent over the death of President Kennedy. He is reported to have fallen on his knees and prayed when lie heard the news...'

On the strength of this paragraph, the Herald Tribune actually published the Bonafede dispatch under this four-column headline:

"Despondent' Kennedy Friend Dies in Plunge"

Hardheaded businessinen - and Stockdale was certainly hardheaded, as his record shows - don't kill themselves because a friend has been murdered, be it the President of the United States. Besides, relations between Kennedy and Stockdale had soured considerably, as we shall see.

All this is part and parcel of the official myth making that goes on day after day in the United States to gloss over the conspicuous taints in The Great Society. It has been going on at a greatly accelerated pace since the assassination of President Kennedy.

The truth of the matter is that Grant Stockdale was also a wheelerdealer and had found himself caught in the Bobby Baker web, If his death was suicide, the reason was that he feared exposure. More likely, Stockdale was murdered because he knew too much and somebody else feared exposure.

Dom Bonafede's dispatch indicates that Stockdale did not resign his ambassadorship of his own free will but was in effect fired by President Kennedy in May 1962, even though this was done with the usual diplomatic niceties:

'Prior to his resignation it was disclosed that he had borrowed $1,000 interest-free from Sidney Kessler, a New York and Miami builder, who was seeking an $£3,000 commitment froin the Federal Housing Administration. The petition was later approved.

'President Kennedy reportedly learned of the loan and demanded that Mr. Stockdale return the $5,000.

'In a trans-Atlantic telephone call to a Miami reporter, Mr. Stockdale reportedly commented that the President was "afraid the loan could make it look like I was finagling around with the FHA"...'

So much for the allegedly warm relationship between Kennedy and Stockdale which caused the latter to kill himself out of 'despondency' after ten days of mourning over his assassinated friend.

Coyly, the Herald Tribune story touches on the background to Stockdale's latest and last entanglements:

'Mr. Stockdale's name also came up briefly as a part time associate of Eugene Hancock, a vending-machine operator, mentioned in the investigation of Bobby Baker...'

The New York Times of December 3, 1963, is more explicit: 'Grant Stockdale once had close business connections with vending-machine concerns that are under investigation in the Robert G. Baker inquiry...

'In an interview published in the Miami Herald last October, shortly after the Senate authorized a study of Mr. Baker's dealings, Mr. Stockdale said:

"I hope I don't get cut up too bad, I haven't done anything wrong..,'

'Mr. Stockdale's responses were to questions about the similarities between the Washington damage suit against Mr. Baker, which touched off the Baker case, and a 1961 damage suit against Mr. Stockdale and others in Miami.

'In April, 1961, just as Mr. Stockdale was leaving Miami to assume his duties as Ambassador to Ireland, he was served with papers in a $131,000 damage suit. The suit alleged that he had used "undue influence" to gain contracts for Automatic Vending Services, Inc., a Miami company in which he owned stock.

'Mr. Stockdale accused the complainant, the Pan-Am Tobacco Corporation, of trying to "get some publicity because I am a United States Ambassador." He denied the charges.

'Pan-Am contended in its suit that Mr. Stockdale had been instrumental in gaining for his company the vending service contract at Erodex, Inc., an aircraft engine maintenance company in Miami.

'Subsequently, Automatic Vending Services, Inc., won contracts totalling $500,000 a year at Patrick Air Force Base and the Air Force missile test center at Cape Kennedy...'

To recapitulate the many and striking similarities between the Stockdalc and Baker cases:

Grant Stockdale is a big wheel in the Democratic Party and a person of considerable influence in Washington; Bobby Baker is also a big wheel in the Democratic Party geared to one of the biggest and exercises even greater influence in the capital.

Stockdale is also a major stockholder in a vending-machine company. This outfit garners, one after another, extremely lucrative contracts in Government installations and Government-controlled defence plants. And eventually it becomes the target of a damage suit by a competitor, charging the use of 'undue influence' in obtaining these contracts.

Two years later, Bobby Baker travels exactly the same road with all its way stations, as has already been described in previous chapters.

Any thought that all this could be purely coincidental is now dispelled by this paragraph in the Times story:

'Mr. Stockdale, one business associate said, was then "harassed" by newsmen concerning his connection with Automatic Vending Services and its president, Eugene A. Hrzncock...'

There you have it, in a nutshell. Eugene A. Hancock is the president of Automatic Vending Services. One of his biggest assets is a prominent stockholder, Grant Stockdale, who has plenty of pull in Washington.

Coincidentally, of course, profitable government contracts start tumbling out of Washington's cornucopia and into the lap of the Hancock-Stockdale enterprise.

"Then, a couple of years later, the scene shifts. Hancock is now president of the Serv-U-Corporation, another automatic vending concern, with the very, very influential Bobby Baker as his principal stockholder (in fact, though not in name). Automatically, again, the cornucopia tilts and starts pouring out juicy government contracts.

And, exactly as before, the new venture leads to a large damage suit in which it is charged that these contracts were obtained through the misuse of influence in Washington.

Hancock is then the conspicuous connecting link between the a(fairs of Grant Stockdale and those of Bobby Baker. Yet after Stockdale's 'suicide', the Senate committee investigating the Baker scandal blandly declared that there was no tie at all. Stockdale, a spokesman for the committee said, was not under investigation and there had been no plans for the committee to question him. And, indeed, the committee did not ask Hancock as far as is known, any questions about Stockdale when it grilled him.

Just one more of those fabulous 'coincidences', you see, that abound in every phase and facet of the Johnson regime, and most strikingly in the Oswald story: at the precise moment that the Bobby Baker investigation gets under way, an earlier high-ranking influence peddler formerly associated with the same figurehead president, Hancock, a man hoping and praying that he won't 'get cut up too bad' in the process, mysteriously plunges to his death from a tall building. Yet, in the official view, there is no link, no connection.

Mystery befitting a B-grade thriller surrounds the third body in the Baker case, one that belonged, in life, to a beautiful woman.

Like other housewives in the crime-ridden Washington area, Mrs. Sheila Drennan made it a standing practice to keep the doors of her home in suburban Maryland not only closed, but locked. Yet one day, early in 1964, when her children caine home from school, they were surprised to find the front door not only unlocked, but wide open.

Their misgivings found horrible confirmation. On the floor of the bathroom, the children found the lifeness nude body of their 34-yearold mother. Nothing else had been touched and in the adjoining bedroom, the police found the woman's clothing and rings arrayed on the bed. Apparently, she was about to take a bath when sudden death overtook her.

What had happened? Did Mrs. Drennan slip in the bathroom and break her neck, or was she murdered? The medical authorities were as puzzled as the police. County Medical Examiner Dr. John Kehoe was unable to make a firm determination of the cause of death. He noted an internal neck injury but expressed the view that this could have been caused 'by a fall or a mugging'. He thought, therefore, that the woman's death could have been 'either accidental or homicide.'

And, what has this all to do with the Baker case? Simply this: Sheila Drennan was the wife of Lorin H. Drennan Jr., a government accountant who gave the Senate probers a detailed picture of Bobby Baker's financial entanglements, including the fact that he had borrowed a total of $ 1.7 million from various banks in four years. And that Lorin Drennan's testimony was followed, in a matter of days, by the mysterious death of his wife.

If the 'accident' that befell Drennan's wife may possibly have been unconnected with the Baker affair who will ever be able to tell for sure? - the 'accidental' death, a few months later, of Bobby's Girl Friday, Carole Tyler, was certainly not due to mere coincidence. However, her case is so Complex and so important that we must deal with it separately in a subscqucut chapter.

Remember, this book was published in 1968. He did not know that Grant Stockdale’s wife had been warned that if she contradicted the “suicide” story, her daughter would be murdered (disclosed by Anne Stockdale on this Forum on 16th June, 2004).

This helps to explain the Shelia Drennan story. Was Lorin Drennan warned that his wife would be murdered if he gave evidence against Bobby Baker? Can we be really be surprised about the lack of witnesses coming forward to claim that LBJ and Bobby Baker were behind the assassination of JFK?

[Mark Stapleton]

Very interesting stuff, John. I very much doubt that Stockdale committed suicide.

I'm surprised Joesten lived in America throughout that period and still remained healthy, given his writings on LBJ and the assassination. Any idea when he died (assuming he's dead)?

[Terry Adams]

I will add to Mark's statement. Why was Bobby Baker allowed to live?
Terry

[John Simkin]

I will add to Mark's statement. Why was Bobby Baker allowed to live?

Because along with LBJ, he was doing the “allowing”.

[Bernice Moore]

For any interested....Below are the Joeston files from the History Matters Archive.

http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk...10135_0001a.htm


B

[John Simkin]

Hugh Aynesworth, Dallas Morning News (1st August, 1964)

If you would listen to this one, he would have you thinking that Lee Harvey Oswald was a polite little misunderstood youth who just got mixed up in the wrong company...

Oh how terrible, says Joesten (an ex-German who became a U.S. citizen in 1948 and must wonder why), poor little Lee Harvey was the victim of a ruthless plot headed by Dallas police leaders, District Attorney Henry Wade and his staff and a few "bad guys" from the FBI.

Joesten further states that Oswald was an agent of both the FBI and the CIA (how's that for a 24-year-old who couldn't spell "wrist"?).

It's the same old tripe with some new flavoring....

The tip-off is the foreword, wherein Joesten dedicates his book to "Mark Lane... the brilliant and courageous New York attorney...." Lane is the troublemaker who spent two day's in Dallas in January on his "investigation" and now pretends to be an expert on all aspects of the weird tragedy.


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

[Peter Lemkin]

For any interested....Below are the Joeston files from the History Matters Archive.

http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk...10135_0001a.htm


B

Thanks for this thread, John. He was really sharp and on the right track early on, and I remember his books. Interesting the CIA tried to 'bad-mouth' him with 'derrogatory files' from the Nazi Secret Police.....the irony was no doubt lost on them!...and likely still is......

....as a matter of fact, I think one can learn who was on the correct track by whether they had a CIA and/or FBI file on their JFK investigative work started. Another irony lost on these who parrot and peddle the 'official coincidence theory'.

This post has been edited by Peter Lemkin: Jan 25 2008, 08:26 PM

[Dawn Meredith]

Important thread. Geez have we ever had a more murderous president than LBJ? I don't mean all the war mongering murders (Viet Nam, Iraq) but US citizens who tried to right some wrongs. No wonder The Guilty Men was taken off The History Channel and the entire series now removed as well. Last I heard Turner was also being sued. The ghost of LBJ lives on.

Dawn

[William Kelly]

For any interested....Below are the Joeston files from the History Matters Archive.

http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk...10135_0001a.htm


B

Yea, the Warren Commission using Gestapo files to debunk a conspiracy theorist. What a desperate joke.

BK

[John Simkin]

Contents of an email I received:


These days I read your (and others) postings regarding Joachim Joesten and his role in the JFK assassination. You said that Joesten in your opinion is one of the “heroes of the investigation into the assassination of JFK”. Oh yes, I agree. You wrote also: “The CIA attempted to convince the Warren Commission that Joesten was an unreliable source. Here is a copy of a letter sent by Richard Helms (Deputy Director for Plans) to J. Lee Rankin, General Counsel of the Warren Commission on 1st October, 1964. Interestingly, Helms tries to smear Joesten by providing evidence that in 1936 he was being sought by the Gestapo.” Incredible. I took a look at the documents provided by historymatters.com. The Gestapo says that Joesten “had attempted to establish a connection with the Communist publishers ‘Neue Weltbuehne’ [New Worldtheater] and with the infamous Karl von Ossietzki in order to depict the economic and cultural conditions in the USSR in a most flattering manner.”

I just got Joesten’s book “CIA” (1958, in German) and read it. I especially was on the lookout for remarks that were possibly “flattering” regarding the USSR. Joesten is talking of the Soviet Union several times, but there is no depicting it “in a most flattering manner”, in fact not the least flattering. On p. 20, for example, he says: “Regarding the methods of the CIA, especially concerning the ‘covert activities’, one has, unfortunately, to notice that they have become, in certain aspects, very similar to the Russian.” That sounds not very flattering, I suppose. Another example (p. 53): “There were - and are - in the governments of the western world seemingly distinguished and matured personalities in responsible positions who have actually not overcome their pro-communist Storm and Stress period of the 20s [!]. Among these crypto-communists the Russian intelligence agency time and again finds willing and valuable tools.” This also does not sound “very flattering”, doesn't it?

Another angle: As far as I know the NSA was completely unknown to the public until ca. 1973; this is what I have always heard/read; but in "CIA" (1958) Joesten mentions and describes the NSA in some detail and even names the director (Ralph Canine). It seems people (journalists) had better read his book(s).

I thought, maybe this could be of some interest for you.

Kind regards,
Brigitte Wilcke
Germany