Bob Atkinson

The diary wasn't found in the apartment, but in Bremer's car at the scene in Laurel, Maryland. That isn't to say that some writing wasn't present in his apartment. I've spoken to Rick Janka, who was a reporter for the Milwaukee Sentinel at time. I wanted to contact him because his initial stories about Bremer contained portions of his writing that no one else had. Here's what he had to say: "He was working at Milwaukee Sentinel as a reporter when the wire service announcement of the Wallace shooting and the involvement of a Milwaukee person came. Janka was given the assignment of going to the apartment. He didn’t have a car, but didn’t want to give up the assignment. He and a photographer ran to the address given and it happened to be that of one of Janka’s old college roommates. Janka figured that the numbers in the address had been transposed and started going to the other possible addresses. He found the apartment building with Bremer’s name on the buzzer, rang it, and was let in. When he when to the apartment, he found two or three man he took to be Secret Service or FBI men were in the apartment along with the younger brother of the building manager, who the men were questioning. Janka identified himself as a reporter and the men promptly left the apartment without saying a word or identifying themselves. Janka took this to be tacit permission to stay and search the apartment for clues about Bremer. Among the items he found was a document sitting on the dresser listing all of the main facts of Bremer’s life: schools he attended, jobs he had worked, names of people he knew, etc. Knowing the size of his scoop, Janka took this piece of paper and made notes of some of the other pieces of writing he found in college-style notebooks. Janka and the photographer spent as estimated hour in the apartment alone before anyone else arrived. Fearing that the police would confiscate the items he had found, Janka hid notes written by Bremer in his socks and underwear as he left. Janka called the Milwaukee Sentinel and gave his colleagues the names and places listed on the document found, but kept some of the information for himself and his own story on Bremer." Among the most interesting things in Janka's story, besides the mysterious folks who didn't identify themselves, is the transposed address numbers (the real address is 2433 West Michigan, Apt. 9). Janka didn't mention what the given address number was and I wouldn't expect him to remember it 30 some years after the fact. Honest SNAFU or something to buy someone a bit more time? It's not clear where this mistake happened - in the wire report or at the newspaper. If anyone out there has the original wire reports about the Wallace shooting, I'd love to see what kind of information was included.

Bremer's religious beliefs are an interesting topic seldom discussed. Up until age eight, the Bremers lived a few blocks from St. Mathew's Luthurian Church and the young Arthur spent a lot of time there. As more and more African-Americans moved into the area, the Bremers joined the classic urban White Flighters and headed to the primarily white south side of Milwaukee. Arthur later told one of the court-appointed psychiatrists: "If we hadn't moved I might have become a priest." Here are a couple of religious views from Arthur's 1st (and unpublished) diary, the one dug up at the viaduct in Milwaukee in 1980. Any misspelling are his, not mine: "You cannot discover God or Religion for yourself because you're told to by an organization of prophets." "Jesus is commercialized. And so is love. And so is friendship in restaurants + service bussinesses." I'm not sure how these ideas sync up with the right-wing Jesus Freaks, but religion isn't a major topic in the first diary.

(3) In an article published in Probe Magazine (May-June 1999) Lisa Pease argues: Is there evidence of CIA involvement in the Wallace shooting? According to newspaperwoman Sybil Leek and lawyer-turned-investigative-reporter Bert Sugar, the answer is yes. According to Leek and Sugar, while Bremer was at the Lord Elgin hotel in Ottawa, he met with a Dennis Cassini. Famed conspiracy researcher Mae Brussell and Alan Stang identified Cassini as a CIA operative. Cassini was found dead from a massive heroin overdose in July, 1972, just two months after the Wallace shooting. Cassini had no history of drug use. Cassini’s address book contained the phone number of a John J. McCleary. McCleary lived in Sacramento, California, and was employed by V & T International, an import-export firm. McCleary drowned in the Pacific ocean in the fall of 1972. His father, amazingly, drowned around the same time in Reno, Nevada. If the CIA was somehow involved, that could explain both E. Howard Hunt’s immediate interest in the case, as well as the role of CBS in filming Bremer in the act of shooting. CBS and the CIA shared a particularly close relationship. CIA involvement might go far in explaining the following connections as well. Bremer’s brother, William Bremer, was arrested shortly after the Wallace shooting for having bilked over 2,000 Miami matrons out of over $80,000 by signing them up for non-existant weight-loss sessions. Curiously, Bremer’s lawyer was none other than Ellis Rubin, the man who had defended many anti-Castro activists and who defended the CIA men who participated in the Watergate break-in. Even more curious is Bremer’s half-sister Gail’s relationship with the Reverend Jerry Owen (ne Oliver Brindley Owen), who figures prominently in the RFK case. Owen’s bible-thumping show was cancelled from KCOP in Los Angeles when evidence surfaced showing he had a possibly sinister relationship with Sirhan Sirhan just prior to the assassination of Robert Kennedy. After the assassination, Owen had gone to the police with a strange tale of having picked Sirhan up as a hitchhiker. But other witnesses claimed Owen had given Sirhan cash, and had more of a relationship with Sirhan that he had admitted. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> The Lisa Pease article is a very good clearing house of all of the various conspiracy theories and strangeness in the Wallace shooting. I'm not inclined to give weight to some of the sources she uses. Example: The Sybil Leek/Burt Sugar book "The Assassination Chain" is an epic of non-documentation that plays very fast and loose with the facts. I'm still waiting for anyone to show me a shread of evidence that Dennis Cossini, Cassini, Cushman, Kushman was actually a real human being. The esteemed William Turner, in this article in the Government By Gunplay collection, wrote that he believed that Cossini was a strawman invented by Alan Stang. Arthur's older half-sister Gail Aiken seems to have been a non-presence in his life, being 14 years old then him. Here are my notes about her as gathered from the Bremer-vs-State of Maryland trial transcript: Sister: Gail Aiken Born: May 11, 1936 Born out of wedlock to Sylvia in 1936. Father unknown, but adopted by William Sr. She reportedly left home at a very early age and moved to California. She had an illegitimate child at age 20, married and divorced, and has been living in California for many years. Visited brother Theodore in Milwaukee several times, but didn’t want to see the parents. The Sirhan Sirhan connection is fascinating. I'd like to know more. William Bremer Jr. is another fascinating person. Pease gets the order of events wrong; William was arrested before Arthur shot Wallace, maybe in April 1972. From my notes: Already conceived when Sylvia and William Bremer got married, William Jr. also left home at a young age and became a “drifter” after serving in the military. Again, the connection to Watergate is fascinating and I'd like to know if anyone has dug up the court records on William's scheme and if he's still alive.

Tim-- A quick gloss of the Earl Nunnery story. He worked at the Milwaukee Chesapeake & Ohio car ferry terminal and immediately after the Wallace shooting, he reported seeing Bremer and another older man at the car ferry asking about taking a large group of people across the lake, working on a campaign, etc. He wasn't sure of the exact date, but it was around April 3-4, 1972 - at the time of the Wisconsin primary - and when Bremer, according to his diary and hotel receipts, in New York. Nunnery's story is very detailed, right down to the stick pin on the older man's lapel, and comes so soon after the shooting (first newspaper report this is published May 18 or 19 - three or four days after the shooting) that it's hard to dismiss out of hand. I think the Cossini/Cassini story has its origins here, with Stang and others taking this genuinely odd and unexplained event and embelishing it. Notice how all of the Cossini stuff appears after the Bremer's trial is over and after it's clear that he isn't going to be talking to the press... I'm not sure of Nunnery's race or family.

I've looking into the Wallace assassination attempt for some time and I think I have some answers to some of these questions: From the opposite side, is there any evidence that the premise of any of the above questions is false? 5. That Dennis Cossini was a journalism student at Marquette University in 1971 or 1972? No. I've logged some hours at the Marquette U. archives and there's no Dennis Cossini or Cassini on record as a student. There's a Denis Kuzma who was a journalism student and involved in some left-wing campus publications, sometimes writing as Rasputin Kuzma. I have a yearbook picture of him; this is not the same person who appears in the group photo on page 15 of the October 1972 Alan Stang article in American Opinion: "The Communist Plot to Kill George Wallace". 7. That Arthur Bremer's brother worked with Sirhan Sirhan at a Santa Anita racing stable? I've seen a document on the Internet listing a Thomas Mark Bremer as working at the same stable as Sirhan Sirhan. Arthur has three brothers: Roger Dean Bremer, William Bremer Jr., and Theodore Bremer. A cousin maybe, but not a brother. 9. How exactly did John J. McCleary of Sacramento "drown in the Pacific Ocean" and who was he? 10. What was the nature of the friendship between Arthur Bremer and Dennis Cossini? I think the better question here is if these things really have anything to do with Bremer. I think the original source of this information is the above listed Alan Stang article, which is also the origin of Dennis Cossini, whose address book McCleary's name supposedly appears. As one of the earlier posters has, I've combed the Toronto newspapers and there's no mention of Cossini or anyone else's body being found dead of an overdose. It also doesn't seem to have occurred in Milwaukee. Although there's no non-John Birch trace of this man in life or death whatsoever (besides the Earl Nunnery-C&O Car Ferry office story, which has it's own problems), are we to believe that his address book, chock full of sinister connections, happened to fall into the hands of Stang? I simply don't buy it. After looking at this for a number of years, I come to think Dennis Cossini or Cushmann or Cassini or Kushman is smoke-screen invented by Stang and the Birchers as a way to tap into the Wallace vote for 1972 American Party candidate and staunch Bircher John G. Schmitz (and graduate of Marquette U). Notice how the Cossini story places the blame on both the Communists and Nixon's government for supposedly covering it up? Schmitz's stump speeches included a brief bit about the Wallace assassination, the "grey figure" supposedly in cahoots with Bremer, and the government's reluctance to investigate fully. He ended up getting a million votes in 1972... There's a lot going on in that initial Stang article, too much to get into here (Heinan, Cullen, Milwaukee's notorious Red Squad, etc) There are a couple of unanswered questions revolving around the Wallace assassination I'd like to throw out there: 1. The trip to Madison. On page 27 of the second part of his diary - the part published as An Assassin's Diary - Bremer compares his New York hotel room's price to one he had previously stayed at in Madison. When was this? Particularly interesting in light of all of that Segretti business explored on another post... 2. The post-assassination scene at Bremer's apartment. I've interviewed Rick Jenka, a Milwaukee Sentinel reporter at the time, and he has some interesting things to say about what happened here. Not to mention the conflicting stories of Hunt and Colson. 3. The November 1971 arrest in Fox Point. What exactly was he doing? I have a theory about him wanting to kill a co-worker named Ceal Myers (he talks about this in the first, unpublished diary), but all of the pieces aren't there yet. 4. Various travel details. The Earl Nunnery story doesn't seem to mesh with his timeline, Bremer's supposed appearance at Holiday Inn the night of Wisconsin primary, etc.

I'm a freelance writer, editor and researcher based in Chicago. Among my various activities, I'm an independent researcher for National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). My primary reason for joining the International Education Forum is my interest in the events surrounding the attempted assassination of Alabama Governor George Wallace. I've been researching this event for a number of years and have been gathering as much information as I can on this neglected piece of history. I was very happy to find some robust discussions in the IEF forum about Bremer, Nixon, Wallace, and various theories about this crime. I want to add my two cents and keep the discuss going.