Philip Graham

[John Simkin]

Namebase entry for Philip Graham:

http://www.namebase.org/main3/Philip-L-Graham.html

Bird,K. The Color of Truth. 1998 (66)

Bradlee,B. A Good Life. 1995 (127-8, 224-8, 249-53)

Bray,H. The Pillars of the Post. 1980 (7, 16-27, 30-1, 34)

Burleigh,N. A Very Private Woman. 1999 (118, 124, 216-7)

CounterSpy 1981-07 (13-5)

Davis,D. Katharine the Great. 1987

DiEugenio,J. Pease,L. The Assassinations. 2003 (342)

Kelly,T. The Imperial Post. 1983

Kurtz,H. Media Circus. 1994 (128-9)

Lasky,V. It Didn't Start With Watergate. 1978 (249)

NameBase NewsLine 1997-04 (13)

National Reporter 1987-F (60)

Olmsted,K. Challenging the Secret Government. 1996 (19, 22, 37)

Parapolitics (Paris) 1984-02 (3)

Rolling Stone 1977-10-20 (63)

Saunders,F. The Cultural Cold War. 2000 (339-40, 427)

Thomas,E. The Man to See. 1991 (177-80)

Thomas,E. The Very Best Men. 1996 (99)

Thomas,K. Popular Alienation: A Steamshovel Press Reader. 1995 (82-3)

[William Kelly]

What happened at Dealy Plaza wasn't a coup d'etat, it was the coup d'grace. The real coup occured at a hotel in Los Angeles during the 1960 Democratic National Convention when Phil Graham was the middleman with all the telephone numbers in blackmailing JFK to take on LBJ as the VP nominee.

BK

[John Simkin]

What happened at Dealy Plaza wasn't a coup d'etat, it was the coup d'grace. The real coup occured at a hotel in Los Angeles during the 1960 Democratic National Convention when Phil Graham was the middleman with all the telephone numbers in blackmailing JFK to take on LBJ as the VP nominee.

This is an interesting point. JFK's decision came as a great shock to all his people. One of the best accounts of the back scene events comes from Bobby Baker's book, Wheeling and Dealing (126-130). Also involved with Phil Graham in this activity was Joe Alsop (a key figure in Operation Mockingbird), John Connally, Sam Rayburn and Bob Kerr (a much under-researched figure because he died before the assassination).

I have heard from another source that Tommy Concoran also played an important role in arranging for LBJ to become vice-president. Baker's book does not mention this. However, a passage about Concoran could be significant (183). Baker claims that Robert Kennedy was leaking information that appeared to be trying to bring down LBJ with him in 1963. We now know this is true (see Carl Curtis's autobiography). Baker suggests that Corcoran was dealing with this on behalf of LBJ. Corcoran, like Baker, both "wheeled and dealed" for LBJ. However, Corcoran, unlike Baker, kept out of prison, although he was definitely accused enough times of taking part in corrupt activities. His illegal methods was the reason he was sacked by FDR in 1941.

[Sterling Seagrave]

Eugene Meyer who was head of the Fed was the father of Katherine (Meyer) Graham. As I recall, Meyer owned the Times-Herald and bought the Washington Post, merged the two papers, and essentially turned them over to his daughter's husband Phil Graham after WW2 when Phil Graham returned from Air Force Intelligence with some of his cronies, including Russell Wiggins, Chalmers Roberts, and others. I worked at the Post for about five years in the 1960s during the JFK assassination and the Bobby Baker case. I understood that Phil Graham was snuffed, not a suicide. Assistant Managing Editor Larry Stern, with whom I worked, along with Les Whitten, was later snuffed while jogging on a beach at Martha's Vineyard, exactly the same MO as the snuffing of Norbert Schlei while jogging on the beach at Malibu -- the "beesting" on the bare leg, followed by the coronary. Similar to the compressed air gun attacks on the Bulgarian expat BBC employees, but using a fast acting seasnake venom on Schlei and Stern, while the Bulgarians were hit with the much slower acting enhanced Ricin.

[John Simkin]

I worked at the Post for about five years in the 1960s during the JFK assassination and the Bobby Baker case. I understood that Phil Graham was snuffed, not a suicide. Assistant Managing Editor Larry Stern, with whom I worked, along with Les Whitten, was later snuffed while jogging on a beach at Martha's Vineyard, exactly the same MO as the snuffing of Norbert Schlei while jogging on the beach at Malibu -- the "beesting" on the bare leg, followed by the coronary. Similar to the compressed air gun attacks on the Bulgarian expat BBC employees, but using a fast acting seasnake venom on Schlei and Stern, while the Bulgarians were hit with the much slower acting enhanced Ricin.

Why was Graham murdered? Have you seen this interesting interview with Deborah Davis in 1992 (Kenn Thomas of Steamshovel Press)

Kenn Thomas: Before we get too far from Phil Graham, I'd like to talk a little bit more about his suicide. Getting back to the article that Leary wrote, he seemed to suggest that there was a reason to believe that it could have been something more than suicide, that there's no indication or public record that Graham wasn't done in. And that the "suicide" happened shortly after this public event where Graham was talking about the JFK/Mary Meyer liaison. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Deborah Davis: Phil died in 1963 and it's now 1992. There's still continuing speculation, 29 years later that he was murdered. In my book, I wrote it as a suicide because that's the way it's been represented and I didn't have any independent knowledge of anything else. If I were doing it today, or if I ever do another edition, I will probably expand on that and spend some time investigating it and finding out whether there is any evidence that it was murder. There were a couple of reasons why it could have been murder. One is the one you mentioned. The people that were protecting Kennedy might have done it because of he was a manic depressive. He was in and out of institutions and he was very mentally unstable. A lot of that probably had to do with the fact that he married into a wealthy family. He married the boss' daughter and they gave him the newspaper, but they were watching every move he made. So he did not react well to the fact that Katharine Graham's father had owned the Washington Post. He may have been killed for that reason, if he was killed.

He may have been killed because he had a mistress named Robin Webb. By that time he had moved out of Katharine's house and he was living with Robin Webb in another house and he was actually behaving as if they were married. He had dinner parties over there with her and invited various members of the Washington elite over there for dinner parties and making it very clear that this was the woman he preferred to Katharine. And at the same time, he was re-writing his will. He re-wrote his will three times. Edward Bennet Williams was his attorney. Edward Bennet Williams, who is very well-known as a Washington power broker. He recently died, but he was very much involved in this. Each time, he willingly, at Phil's request, wrote a will that gave Katharine less and less of a share of the Washington Post and gave more and more of it to Robin Webb. By the third rewrite she had nothing and Robin Webb had everything. And this was at a time when Katharine had pretty much given up on the marriage and realized that in order to save the newspaper, which she thought of as her family newspaper--her father built that newspaper and she didn't want to let it go to some mistress of her husband's--and she had come to the conclusion that she either had to divorce him and win the paper in a divorce settlement, or she had to have him declared mentally incompetent. Each of these alternatives was very unattractive to her. And so there's some speculation that either she arranged for him to be killed or somebody said to her, "don't worry, we'll take care of it" and there's some speculation that it might have even been Edward Bennet Williams.

She took him out of the sanitarium one weekend and took him out to their farm in Virginia and this was where he blew his brains out with a shotgun. And the police report was never really made public. After my paperback edition was published this fall, I got a call from some woman who claims that she knew for a fact that it was murder. And if I ever do publish another edition, I intend to look into that.

[John Simkin]

George Smathers went to college with Phil Graham. They remained friends but he upset a lot when in 1963 Graham committed suicide. Smathers commented: "Well, if you'd been married to Kay Graham you'd have probably shot yourself too."

[Sterling Seagrave]

Do you have any information on why Phil Graham and Larry Stern were "snuffed"?

Larry was a close friend of mine, and became assistant managing editor of the WashPost. He was by far their star investigative reporter, and made a lot of enemies during the LTV scandal, the Bobby Baker scandal, and many others. He knew who had been involved in the JFK assassination. It was because he was totally straight (and a true champion of the underdog) that he was not chosen to become managing editor. Eventually, it was decided to get rid of him, so the Agency (or the Enterprise – meaning the privatized part of the Agency) had Larry shot with a compressed air rifle firing a tiny dart, the same method used on Schlei, and on many others. The choice of poisons varies, depending on the objective. This almost invisible dart has a much greater range than the jeweler’s watch bearing fired by the equivalent Soviet assassination weapon, used on the Bulgarian emigres. If you find this hard to believe, look closely at the snuffing of Dr. Richard Kelly in UK. As to Phil Graham, he was up to his ears in the manipulation of JFK in behalf of LBJ and the Robber Barons – as you’ve shown. Like several other big players, he began to go bonkers with the burden of what he had been involved in, was drinking heavily, whoring around so that Kay Graham was mightily pissed, and there were many of us at the WashPost who concluded that his purported suicide did not wash. It was an assisted suicide.

[Lee Forman]

"Larry was a close friend of mine, and became assistant managing editor of the WashPost. He was by far their star investigative reporter, and made a lot of enemies during the LTV scandal, the Bobby Baker scandal, and many others. He knew who had been involved in the JFK assassination. It was because he was totally straight (and a true champion of the underdog) that he was not chosen to become managing editor. Eventually, it was decided to get rid of him, so the Agency (or the Enterprise – meaning the privatized part of the Agency) had Larry shot with a compressed air rifle firing a tiny dart, the same method used on Schlei, and on many others. The choice of poisons varies, depending on the objective. This almost invisible dart has a much greater range than the jeweler’s watch bearing fired by the equivalent Soviet assassination weapon, used on the Bulgarian emigres. If you find this hard to believe, look closely at the snuffing of Dr. Richard Kelly in UK. As to Phil Graham, he was up to his ears in the manipulation of JFK in behalf of LBJ and the Robber Barons – as you’ve shown. Like several other big players, he began to go bonkers with the burden of what he had been involved in, was drinking heavily, whoring around so that Kay Graham was mightily pissed, and there were many of us at the WashPost who concluded that his purported suicide did not wash. It was an assisted suicide.

Mr Seagrave,

Any ideas as to the identity of Nagell's 'Graham?' 'Arturo Verdestein' - the name applied to an individual that was the subject of Nagell correspondence while incarcerated, is believed to be Arthur Greenstein, and individual that Nagell crossed paths with at the Hotel Luma in Mexico City. 'Bob Graham' appears to still be an unknown - Nagell may have also given him the pseudonym 'Abe Greenbaum.' Can't find the description at the moment - Greenstein had him as tall, wearing glasses, a boozer and a womanizer - reference is out there someplace. Some party Greenstein attended with Nagell where he had occasion to meet this 'Graham.'

- lee

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/nagell2.htm

24. Richard Case Nagell, addendum enclosed with letter of January 28, 1970, to the editor of The Family; SS 54. In his contacts with Dick Russell, Nagell referred to the individual only as "Bob." Russell states, "If Nagell knew Bob's last name, he has never revealed it" (Russell, 241). Yet Nagell clearly refers to "Bob" as "Robert Graham" in his response to the article in The Family, which is quoted in Russell (cf. p. 292).

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/nagell2.htm

Nagell claimed that in the fall of 1962, he began working undercover in Mexico City for one "Robert Graham,"(7) described to Dick Russell as a "'subordinate' CIA officer whose ultimate reporting reached all the way up to Desmond FitzGerald in the CIA hierarchy."(8) When an agency of the USSR purportedly offered Nagell an intelligence assignment related to the Cuban Missile Crisis, he allegedly consulted Graham for advice. According to Nagell, Graham instructed him to "take the bait," signifying that Nagell would ostensibly be infiltrating the Soviet agency under Graham's supervision.(9) At about this same time, Nagell was allegedly given an assignment concerning Lee Harvey Oswald, though Nagell specified that the task was in no way related to the JFK assassination.(10)

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According to Nagell, "Graham" subsequently gave him instructions to "initiate certain action against Mr. Oswald, who was the indispensable tool in the conspiracy" — to try to persuade Oswald "that the deal was phony and if that didn't work . . . to get rid of him."

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"Graham" allegedly also assigned Nagell to infiltrate Alpha 66, a militant group of anti-Castro Cuban exiles, in order to verify whether there was any truth to the rumor that members of the group were planning an assassination attempt on President John F. Kennedy.(11) Nagell claimed he had infiltrated the group and determined that it was planning an assassination attempt for the last week of September, probably the 26th, "presumably" in Washington, DC.(12) Nagell claimed that two members of this group had posed as agents of Castro's G-2 intelligence service and had recruited Lee Harvey Oswald into the alleged plot under the pretense that killing JFK would make Oswald a hero in the eyes of Castro and his followers.(13)

According to Nagell, "Graham" subsequently gave him instructions to "initiate certain action against Mr. Oswald, who was the indispensable tool in the conspiracy" — to try to persuade Oswald "that the deal was phony and if that didn't work, and it looked like things were going to progress beyond the talking stage, to get rid of him."(14) As onetime Nagell attorney, Bernard Fensterwald, Jr., recalled, "The USSR ordered Nagell to eliminate Lee Harvey Oswald because they thought it might be an extreme embarrassment to them if he was caught, not because he was one of them, but because of his history."(15)

Nagell said that he refused to go through with the final stage of the plan — the assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald — at which time "Graham" allegedly revealed himself to be not simply an officer of the CIA, but actually a double agent in the employ of the Soviet government. "Graham" purportedly threatened that if Nagell did not carry out his alleged assignment to eliminate Oswald, he would reveal to the FBI that Nagell had been performing services for the Soviet Union all along.(16) For reasons Nagell consistently refused to explain to assassination researchers, instead of carrying out this alleged assignment, he entered the State National Bank in El Paso and discharged his revolver.

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

"He was a charter member of what came to be known as "the goon squad," a group of young New Dealers who, in the days before Pearl Harbor, met o Monday evenings in the apartment of economist Robert Nathan ,who by day was in charge of developing military requirements to help the nation mobilize for war. In addition to Phil, Rauh and Prich, the group included Isaiah Berlin, diplomat, Oxford don, philosopher, and great friend of Felix Frankfurter, and Lauchlin Currie, the first professional economist to work in the White House. The company was all male; wives were not welcome.

Phil placed a starring role. To some he seemed a brash upstart, but others recognized that he was the son-in-law of the publisher of The Washington Post, and the Post was leading the was in pushing for American involvement in the war. In August 1940, Meyer fired his editor, the Quaker isolationist Felix Morley, and replaced him with the interventionist Herbert Elliston. Financial editor and columnist for The Christian Science Monitor, and earlier its correspondent in China, he had refused to become a Christian Scientist, thereby, in effect, refusing the editorship of the Monitor. Within a week of arriving at the Post, Elliston called for "speed, and more speed" in entering the war;"every minute," he said, "the heat of the European blaze is hotter and closer!"

The goon squad was known for leaking and feeding information to selected reporters and columnists, and Phil had an inside line to journalists who were squarely in the interventionist camp. Te preferred newsmen included Alfred Friendly, a favorite of Eugene Meyer's who had moved to the Post in 1939 from the Washington Daily News; and Drew Pearson and his partner, RObert Allen, who since 1932 had been writing the syndicated column "Washington Merry-Go-Round," and offshoot of their shocking and best-selling books that exposed the political, social, business, and sexual secrets of Washington's most powerful; the column, then in Cissy Patterson's Times-Herald, would soon move to the Post" pp. 102-103, Power, Privilege, And The Post by Carol Felsenthal

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Does anyone know much about this Elliston's background in China? Did he represent a compromise between Europe v. Asia focus in an attempt to divide the latter away from the isolationist camp [i.e. win over those isolationists who thought that the interventionists were more Eurocentric, and perhaps not strongly enough commited to US unilateralism in Latin American and China?]

Also I am pretty certain that Felix Morley is the Grandfather of Jefferson Morley. Can anyone confirm that?

Also was Thomas Corcoran also a member of this social group that the author refers to as "the goon squad"?

Also, elsewhere the author tells us that Phil Graham's little brother Bob was not the only future Senator in Phil's life. Phil's boyhood close friend was George Smathers. First i had heard of that, and perhaps interesting, given the Capitol whispering in late summer and Fall of 1963.

Edited July 23, 2012 by Nathaniel Heidenheimer

[Guest Tom Scully]

Nathaniel, if you combine what Jefferson Morley posted here :

http://www.jefferson...ey.com/Bio.html

...with this from the 9 March, 1952 WaPo :

...and this :

FM Morley, Sun's first man in China, dies

‎

The Sun - Mar 15, 1982

Felix M. Morley, The Sun's first correspondent to China, a former Pulitzer ... and Christina B. Borden, of An- a son, Anthony J. Morley, of Minn., and eight grand- ...

It is confirmed that Felix M. Morley of the Washington Post was Jefferson's grandfather. Jefferson is named for his great-grandfather:

http://records.ances...hx?pid=17306508

Jefferson Middleton

(I read your suggestion about rewriting the Rockefeller connections behind Mimi Beardsley in an easy to read, linked format. I agree, but I just have to control the stream of distractions tugging me in other directions, such as responding here....)

EllistonOct1940.pdf

Edited July 23, 2012 by Tom Scully

[Guest Tom Scully]

More on Herbert Elliston (Also, see .pdf file attached at bottom of preceding post)

EllistonMarch940.pdf

[Paul Brancato]

Have any journalists interviewed Senator Graham and asked him about Philip, or whether he was ever CIA? Did he also get invited to LBJ's ranch? His recent interest in re-opening the 9/11 investigation, coming as it does from someone in a position to know, makes me wonder what secrets he might want to tell. I don't mean this suggestion to be flip in any way.

[Paul Brancato]

I was of course referring to Bob Graham of Florida.