The Paine Files

[Ron Bulman]

The first thread I posted on in the forum, Where's Ruth's Couch by Chris Newton contained a link that led to this picture I'd never seen. 

http://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10897#relPageId=11&tab=page

I got excited when I saw two, two drawer file cabinets in the lower right part of the picture.  I thought are these the file cabinets I've read somewhere about a Dallas cop taking files from about pro Castro supporters?  Files that had disappeared?  Those in the picture were too big for Oswald to be toting around from Fort worth to Dallas to New Orleans, and Ruth back to Dallas since he came back from Russia.  No, those are not the files I'd read of, somewhere, sometime.  Dallas County Deputy Sherriff Buddy Walthers confiscated those on 11/22/63 and turned them over to Captain Will Fritz at the Dallas Police Department.  I've been looking and found nothing about them ever being seen since.  In his Warren Hearing testimony Walthers describes them as "little metal file cabinets...they would carry an 8 by 10 (11 1/2?) folder...but with a single handle on top of it".

https://www.jfk-assassination.com/warren/wch/vol7/page548.php

While he denies looking in them at one point near the end he remembers a letter head Michael Paine pointed out as "from the people he writes to in Russia".

He also mentions the files in his report on 11/22/63.

http://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh19/html/WH_Vol19_0269b.htm

My contention is these files belonged to The Paines.  Between their family ties to intelligence and Michaels taking Lee to ACLU meetings, then a general Walker speech (???) and more this seems more plausible than the claim that they belong to Oswald. 

In Michel Paines bio here on the forum Mr. Simkin quotes Jim Di Eugino about the files.  While I've found a little more info, not much.  Any help would be appreciated.

http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKpaineM.htm

[Michael Clark]

Ron, Nothing solid here, but it may prod somebody's memory, but I believe I read that Michael Paine was identified, through pictures, as a person who was querying students at a local university regarding their political positions. IIRC, Michael was doing this anonymously or under cover. He was gathering intelligence on students, essentially.

[Ron Bulman]

3 minutes ago, Michael Clark said:

Ron, Nothing solid here, but it may prod somebody's memory, but I believe I read that Michael Paine was identified, through pictures, as a person who was querying students at a local university regarding their political positions. IIRC, Michael was doing this anonymously or under cover. He was gathering intelligence on students, essentially.

Thanks for spurring my memory.  In looking for info on the subject I did come across something about Michael doing such.  I'm pretty sure it was on the SMU campus but I can't tell you where I read it at the moment.

[Ty Carpenter]

https://grassyknollgirl.wordpress.com/2013/09/27/308/

Above link to the story.

 

[James DiEugenio]

Quote

There is an interesting thread on this over at ROKC.  It appears that the files survived except they were stripped empty of all but one letter.

 

[Ron Bulman]

17 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

 

I'd tried to link the ROKC thread and the header for it kept saying something about Buell Wesley Frazier (3x), my technical ineptness at work again.  It does digress on the Ruth's babysitter bit for near half of it.  I didn't get the connection of her to the files.  That thread and your comment about them being domestic surveillance agents quoted by Mr. Simkin are about all I did find regarding comments/discussion on the subject of the files.

I thought ROKC was the source of a 30 second audio clip of Ruth in the 90's talking about the files but I looked there again to link it and can't find it.  In it she laughingly tells a small audience that laughs with her (to paraphrase) "they asked me about 6 or 7 boxes of files, I told them of three boxes of record albums and three boxes of my papers from college days".  I'm guessing no one raised their hand and asked, Ruth, how did they get those 12 and a half inch Perry Como albums into the small metal file cabinets that would hold a 8 X 10 (11 1/2"?) described by Officer Walthers to the Warren Omission?

I'd read Michael's bio previously, just like the depth of your comment the fact that he went to Harvard went right over my head.  How many other engineers at Bell Helicopter in Hurst Texas went to Harvard?   How many had his East coast family connections stretching back to the 1700's?

Edited July 18, 2017 by Ron Bulman

[James DiEugenio]

Don't forget, in 1963 Mike Paine was living off a trust fund from the Forbes family, and a second smaller one from the Cabots.

His relatives in the state department helped run the coup against Arbenz for United Fruit.  And he also had family members on the board of United Fruit.

Ever look up Naushon Island?  Talk about high class. One of Ruth Paine's stops that summer before she visited her CIA sister was there.  I find that interesting because it really was not her relatives on that very exclusive island, it was Mike's.  And yet they were supposed to be estranged.  She then goes and visits her sister, except she cannot recall where it was.  Or what agency of government her sister worked for. If you read Garrison's grand jury examination of her, in retrospect, there is no way to characterize her replies except as evasive.

Garrison asks her straight out:  Who did your sister work for?  Ruth says she does not know.  He then tries to zoom in on the location.  Ruth does not know the city or the state.  And if my new information on this matter is correct, she deliberately mislead him on this point.  It appears her sister did not live in Virginia at that time.  She lived in Maryland.  

Those kinds of responses I think are suspicious.  First, they are not credible answers to rather simple questions.  Second, they hide an important factor. 

Max Good's film is going to be revolutionary I think.

Edited July 18, 2017 by James DiEugenio

[Michael Walton]

Jim you  said  you  have  new info above. What  do  you  mean  by  that?

[Ron Bulman]

I believe my earlier mention of a Walker speech should have been a reference to a John Birch Society meeting, and, Michael apparently went to Harvard for 2 years but after some D's and an F did not return.

No new info here on the files but some interesting background on the Paines most here are probably familiar with.

http://jfklancer.com/pdf/Paine.pdf 

[James DiEugenio]

One of then nice things about appearing regularly on BOR and answering questions is that the listeners get involved with certain topics.

Well, after I talked about Ruth Paine  before the Clay Shaw grand jury one night, someone sent me a very interesting e mail attachment.  Because Ruth had lead Garrison into thinking that her sister lived in Falls Church VA.  

This guy went through a lexis nexis database and found a newspaper story from the sixties.  It turns out that Sylvia Hyde Hoke, and her husband lived in Maryland, not Virginia.  There was a long feature article done in a local Maryland newspaper about her husband who was also a government employee and had some patented inventions.  I did not keep that article.  I should have run it down and recalled the exact dates.  But from my memory, it appears they lived in Maryland in 1968, which is when Ruth was before the grand jury. And they had been there for a time. Although I cannot be certain about 1963.

I do not find it credible that Ruth would not recall either the city or state her sister lived in at the time of her visit.  Neither do I find it credible that she did not know what her sister did for a living after being there for a week or so.  If I had been Garrison, I would have seriously thought of filing perjury charges against her. Not quite as bad as Ferrie's goose hunting and ice skating baloney, but still just not believable.

Edited July 18, 2017 by James DiEugenio

[Michael Clark]

"And while this is still being narrowed down, it's beginning to look like Liddy's little D.C. and Ohio trips very well might have coordinated awfully closely with Ruth Hyde Paine's little trip to Washington, D.C., to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and to Ohio between 24 August and 10 September 1963. And if that's not scary enough, look at this little section of timeline:

• On Thursday, 22 August 1963, the CIA again granted an Approval for Liaison with John Lindsay Hoke "on a continuing basis," reaffirming his clearance for classified information "up to and including Top Secret."
• Three days later, on Sunday, 24 August 1963, Ruth Hyde Paine traveled to Baltimore, Maryland, then the next day to Washington, D.C. "to stay with sister." And "sister" happens to be Sylvia Hyde Hoke—who has a CIA-blessed secret clearance from AID, and whose husband is John Lindsay Hoke.
• Five days later, on Thursday, 29 August 1963, Ruth Hyde Paine left the Hokes and went to Paoli, Philadelphia, just outside Philadelphia, to "wait for" her father would will join her there. Her father, of course, is William Avery Hyde, also of AID.
• On 10 September 1963, Ruth Hyde Paine left Paoli for Ohio to see "relatives and friends." Also in Ohio is the headquarters of Marathon Oil—where G. Gordon Liddy was afoot around this time.

Ashton Gray"

From this thread:

 

[James DiEugenio]

Ruth was pretty busy that summer, eh?

And she accomplished her early objective at the end by separating Lee from Marina.

[Michael Clark]

1 minute ago, James DiEugenio said:

Ruth was pretty busy that summer, eh?

And she accomplished her early objective at the end by separating Lee from Marina.

I would love to see a follow-up from Ashton on that research.

Edited July 18, 2017 by Michael Clark

[Max Good]

Here's what Ruth told me about the filing cabinets.  Unfortunately, I did not get a shot of the cabinet in her closet.

 

Quote

Interviewer:         This was a police report of some stuff they confiscated from your house. I think you mentioned this another time I talked to you about these.

 

Ruth:      I think Oswald had some handbills regarding Cuba, so that would have been his stuff. "Then we also found a set of metal file containers containing records that appeared to be names and activities of Cuban sympathizers." Yeah, I read that in the paper, too. Seven things, three metal file cabinets. I have one in my closet, still, if you want to take a picture of it. It was the correspondence between myself and my family and my college papers and other personal items. Then there was a camera. A projector was one of the items. Let's see. I think there was something else. Oh, yeah, three boxes of '78 folk dance records, which I was going to use that next weekend to teach some folk dancing at a Quaker conference, but they were gone, and I didn't think it was smart for me to leave town the weekend after the assassination, and I should just be there. I'll tell you. I've learned a lot about being careful believing what you see in the paper. Just because it's written down, just because an authoritative police source said, it doesn't make it true.

Ruth:      I was wondering, shall I put it on eBay? Get the file cabinet that the police took out of Mrs. Paine's garage. Read the papers. What will you pay for it? I'm just teasing.

Quote

Interviewer:         Their theory is that you and Michael were involved in surveillance activities of the radical left.

 

Ruth:      What?

 

Interviewer:        That you and Michael were involved in surveillance activities of the radical left.

 

Ruth:      Who would be the radical left?

 

Interviewer:        Cuban sympathizers.

 

Ruth:      Oh.

 

Interviewer:        Communists.

 

Ruth:      Oh, that's news to me. I was not aware of surveilling anybody or watching Oswald.

 

Interviewer:        Their argument is that maybe watching Oswald was a job you had to keep an eye on this-

 

Ruth:      Flake.

 

Interviewer:        This young communist defector who had returned and to somehow keep an eye on him.

 

Ruth:      Nonsense. Absolute nonsense.

 

Interviewer:         There was no one who ever might have suggested that you keep an eye on Oswald, befriend the Oswalds or anything like that?

 

Ruth:      No. I told you about the conversation that I had with the FBI man. We were both looking upon him as harmless and somewhat deluded. He had gone to the Soviet Union, and he had come back, but we were really talking about a person's right in this country to have opinions that were not popular.

 

Interviewer:         Yeah, that's very important. Oswald-

 

Ruth:      I'll tell you. I really love this country. Yesterday I signed three letters that were written by Amnesty International folks, to help get some people out of prison. This person is in prison for saying something bad about the Sultan, or this person is in prison for writing something in the paper. We have a remarkable democracy. It's struggling in this political era, but it is still very open and very welcoming of multiple ideas. I'm very grateful to it.

 

Interviewer:        I guess there's room for all these conspiracy theories, too, in a democracy.

 

Ruth:      Yeah, let them roll.

 

[James DiEugenio]

When the WC got the file cabinets, there was nothing in them except one letter.

 

That is in that ROKC thread.  Its difficult to align that with what was  in the Buddy Walthers' report.

Edited July 19, 2017 by James DiEugenio