"Hidden" FPCC History

[John Dolva]

Generally the FPCC and the Civil Rights struggle are discussed separately:

1960 - March 17: "Eisenhower (secretly) approves CIA training of Cuban exiles to overthrow the new revolutionary regime. As U.S. hostility to Cuba rises, U.S. liberals and radicals form the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC) in early 1960. Starting with a small handful of members the group grows to 7,000 members in 25 chapters and 40 student groups. FPCC helped coordinate Fidel’s visit to New York in fall 1960 (see below) and led protests against the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. It sponsored trips to Cuba, and one in July 1960 included Amiri Baraka (then LeRoi Jones), Robert F. Williams and Harold Cruse. The group declined afterwards and went out of existence in 1963. (Che; Goines chron says Eisenhower’s approval was February 17; CrossRoads No. 46; Kelley; and for details on FPCC see Van Gosse’s book Where the Boys Are: Cuba, Cold War America and the Making of a New Left)"

1961 - May 4 : "First “freedom riders” (sponsored by CORE) leave Washington, D.C. in two buses; on May 14 a white mob in Anniston, Alabama burns one of the buses and beats up the riders on both. The riders are beaten again when they regroup and reach Birmingham the next day. CORE leaders discontinue the freedom ride, but SNCC activists continue with further efforts, on May 20 riders including John Lewis are beaten in Montgomery. On May 21 1,000 Blacks gathered in Martin Luther King’s First Baptist Church are besieged by a white mob and it takes federal marshals and national guardsmen to protect those inside. The Kennedy administration tries to get the protesters to stop and “cool off”; its reluctance to protect demonstrators or press for civil rights at home while proclaiming democratic freedoms abroad has a major radicalizing impact on SNCC and others. A Freedom Riders Coordinating Committee is formed by representatives of SNCC, CORE and SCLC and in the following months hundreds ride and are arrested. The Interstate Commerce Commission rules segregation in bus and train terminals is illegal on September 22. (Carson; Gitlin)"

The "Hidden History of the Fair Play for Cuba committee"

1961 - June : The Southern Intellingence Network is established, and one of the first on their agenda is infiltrating and disrupting the Fair Play for Cuba comittee, having established that the FPCC was also a sponsor of the Freedom Riders.

Rockwells Nazis organises the Reverse Riders, where they organise to exile blacks north to States where the Freedom Riders come from, and to where their suppport come from such as Boston, JFK's home state.

IOW the FPCC was well within the sight of the Segregationists as early as mid 1961. IOW the FPCC was recognised as something more than a Cuba support group. For the Segregationists, discrediting the FPCC was high on the agenda early on, not becase of theor support for Cuba but because of their support for de-segregation.

After the assassination this had been accomplished.

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/etd/d/2006/berre...erreys29254.pdf

"Peniel E. Joseph argues that this is partially the result of popular and historical narratives constructing the civil rights era as the ‘King years.’ Positioning King and an ideology of nonviolence at the core of this narrative “has rendered invisible whole narratives of civil rights history.”20 Specifically, Joseph notes that scholars have erased the black radical tradition from the record and they have removed the U.S. movement from the context of international political struggles.21 As a result, the radicalism and internationalist perspective seems to emerge on the scene suddenly in the mid-1960s with groups such as the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. However, as Joseph demonstrates, black radicalism and internationalism were already part of the early 1960s movement through individuals such as Robert F. Williams, Julian Mayfield, and Dan Watts and with organizations such as the Fair Play for Cuba Committee and the Revolutionary Action Movement."

a mystery wrapped in a riddle in an enigma.

The Cuba Centric assassination theories hide or ignores significant aspects of the Civil Rights struggle.

[Greg Parker]

FPCC antecedents.

The granddaddy was the The Anti-Imperialist Movement which began in 1898. At that time, the following territories have come under US sovereignty:

Philippine Islands

Hawaii

Guam

American Samoa

Wake and Midway Is.

Puerto Rico

Virgin Islands

TOTAL AREA = 125,357 AND POPULATION = 15,443,633

The Anti-Imperialist Movement has had more comebacks than Dame Nellie Melba... with some of its offshoots, reincarnations and outgrowths including: the Haiti-Santo Domingo Independence Committee; The American Fund for Public Service Committee on American Imperialism; The Non-Intervention Citizens Committee; The National Citizens Committee on Relations with Latin America; The All-America Anti-Imperialist League; and the American Committee for Fair Play to China.

But the one possibly of most interest was chaired by the brilliantly named Oswald Garrison Villard (which I'm sure contains anagrams about radar grids and Dr's in Irving and Dallas...) was the Committee for Fair Play for Puerto Rico. This committee was started up by the ACLU in 1937 after police in that country killed 50 demonstrators belonging to the independence movement.

The background to this has a somewhat familiar tone to it: Some members of the Nationalist Party had applied to the Mayor of Ponce for a permit to hold a parade and demonstration. The permit was granted, but on the set day, the Mayor under pressure by the Governor, revoked it (some might say in true to Ponce style). The chief of police himself went to the city for the purpose of influencing the mayor. The pretext used was that the parade was to be in reality a movement of military forces. The basis for this was the fact that the uniformed Nationalist organization, given the grandiloquently hopeful title of the "Army of Liberation," was to participate in the parade.

The build-up to this event too, holds some interest: The leaders of the Nationalist Party and its chairman, Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos, along with seven others had been arrested and tried for a "seditious conspiracy" to overthrow the government of the United States.

Nuts to that. He may have wanted to, but the possibility of him ever achieving it was about on par with England winning the next Ashes series. What they really got him for was exposing cancer cell injection experiments and his representations on behalf of sugar cane workers against US conglomerates.

As for the FPCC... it served its purpose...or was turned to one...

Edited May 10, 2007 by Greg Parker

[Robert Howard]

The April 12, 1962 issue of the Galveston Daily News featured an article concerning Robert Taber, Richard Gibson and the Fair Play for Cuba Committee entitled “Unfinished Chore for Bob” written by Fulton Lewis Jr.

---- Attorney General Robert Kennedy has been back home for more than a month now and he has some unfinished business. The advice comes from Florida Congressman Bill Cramer, who is critical of Kennedy for not having placed the Fair Play for Committee on his list of subversive organizations. “Fair Play” was founded more than two years ago by Robert Taber, an ex-convict now on the Havana payroll of Fidel Castro.

Taber, once sentenced to 30 years in prison for kidnapping, armed robbery and auto theft, founded ”Fair Play” with a group of New York leftist’s. One of these was Joanne Grant an attractive young Negro, whose service in the Communist Party dates back several years. Long before Fidel Castro won victory in Cuba, Miss Grant was to be found in Peiping, huddling with Red Chinese Premiere Chou-En-lai

Miss Grant was secretary of the New York “Fair Play” chapter in its early days.

Soon after its inception, the senate internal security subcommittee opened an investigation into ”Fair Play.” It called Miss Grant, who hid behind the fifth amendment when asked about Communist control over the organization.

It called scores of “Fair Play” operatives from coast to coast, discovered that Communist participation in the group was rampant. In Chicago veteran party hack Dick Crilley helped run the show. In Cleveland, the wife of Ohio’s Communist Party chairman was a wheelhorse. In Detroit, the situation was similar.

About this time, Taber skipped the country, to avoid prosecution by the Justice Department, for failure to register as a foreign agent. At the same time, federal agents were studying his testimony for possible perjury action. Taber had sworn that Castro gold did not, finance his operation. Testimony to the contrary by an old sidekick, sent Taber Havana - bound. He pounds a typewriter for Castro’s official “Prensa Libre.” at the present time and was wounded while acting as a correspondent with the Cuban army during the invasion last April. Taber left with $19,000 in “Fair Play” funds and co-founder Richard Gibson took over. Gibson, like Taber is a former CBS newsman. In earlier years he was pretty much an educational bum, studying at Kenyon College for a year, before being given the boot for failure to pay his bills.

He then studied in Rome for a year on a scholarship paid for by the John H. Whitney Foundation. Four years later he was at Paris’ Sorbonne

on the G.I. Bill of Rights, He studied at Columbia University with bills paid by CBS. Gibson is violently anti-American. He makes no apology for the fact that Communist agents run the “Fair Play” show from coast to coast.

Rep. Cramer thinks that Bobby Kennedy is lax in not having placed “Fair Play” on the attorney general’s list. The senate internal security subcommittee which probed “Fair Play” for 14 month’s calls the

group a Communist organization.

So does John Edgar Hoover, of Mr. Kennedy’s justice department. FBI Director Hoover, in his annual report for the fiscal year 1961, said: “FBI investigations also have shown that the ‘Fair Play for Cuba Committee’ has been heavily infiltrated by the Communist party and the Socialist Workers party and these parties have actually organized some chapters of the committee”. Cramer asked Kennedy to act on ‘Fair Play’ more than a month ago. To date he had heard nothing from the President’s brother.

Robert: Looking back at the article decades later, there is the realization that despite the volume of books on the Kennedy assassination, my experience is that comparitively there is not much coverage given to the origins and the birth pangs, if you will, of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, other than the cursory mentions of Lee Oswald’s involvement and interaction with the group, I am sure there are some [or a lot] of exceptions, but unfortunately for myself, I have had to dig quite a bit, without a great deal of success to discover enough information to approach having an adequate knowledge of that part of the organization, i.e. facts that are outside the scope of “Oswald and the FPCC” per se.

There are more than hints that the FPCC might have been, what’s the word compromised, in a sense, from the very beginning insofar as some of it’s representatives, appear not to have been the simpleton? traditional disgruntled leftist, more commonly [in those day’s] referred to as a “communist,” particulary in the southern part of the United States.

Tie Magazine Monday, Apr. 18, 1960

Winning Friends

For the intellectual, politician or celebrity, a tempting proposition this year is a trip to Fidel Castro's Cuba, where a visitor can see real revolution in action while enjoying the uncrowded comforts of a winter resort. The invitation usually comes from an overseas official of Castro's July 26 movement, who arrives bearing a free, first-class ticket on Cubana Airlines and free reservations at such luxury hotels as the Habana Hilton. At rum-punch receptions and over dinners of Morro crab, the friendly visitor soaks up heady talk of revolution, sometimes from the "maximum leader" himself.

The Loud Praisers. Trips are arranged to schools, hospitals and agricultural coops, or to beaches, cockfights and nightclubs. All that the visitor need contribute is a little quotable praise of Cuba or criticism of the U.S.—and the kind of visitor selected is usually glad to oblige.

Joe Louis says "there is no place in the world except Cuba where the Negro can go in the wintertime with absolutely no discrimination." Jack Paar (who paid his own way down) deplores the "untruthful things I've read about what was happening in Cuba. This man Castro is beloved by these people." Existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre called the Cuban revolution "the most original I have known" and dismissed the U.S. as a "headless nation."

The Fair Players. All this sentiment got a loud echo in Manhattan last week from something called "the Fair Play for Cuba Committee," a group of 28 including Sartre, his friend Simone de Beauvoir, Novelists Norman Mailer and Truman Capote (who explained that "my stepfather is Cuban"), and British-born New Yorker Drama Critic Kenneth Tynan ("Americans tend to judge a regime on the extent to which it likes America"). In a seven-column, $4,725 ad in the New York Times, the Fair Players charged that the U.S. press is deliberately distorting the news from Cuba. Item: press reports of Communism in the Castro government are "consistently used to create a smoke screen behind which the social objectives of the Cuban revolution can be attacked and sabotaged."

The nominal head of the committee was Author Waldo (America Hispana) Frank, but the real organizer was Robert Taber, a Columbia Broadcasting System newsman, and one of a group of U.S. journalists who won gold medals from Castro for getting through to interview him in his Sierra Maestra days. Frank has been a guest of Castro, and Taber of a Cuban publisher. Taber drew up the ad, and Frank mailed it out to his many friends among the intellectual set. They got enough names and money to pay the bill, but a more impressive list could be made from those who ignored the plea or pointedly turned it down. This group ranged from Ernest Hemingway, Carl Sandburg and Jacques Maritain to Eleanor Roosevelt and Luis Munoz Marin. Revealing the side of Cuba that Castro's ad-signing supporters do not seem to see, the Cuban Ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, Andres Vargas Gomez, quit his post last week charging that the government is "totalitarian and Communist oriented." And Commentator Luis Conte Aguero, whose Cuban TV rating was once up to Paar, fled to U.S. exile because, he said, Castro is now a "prisoner of pro-Communists." Inmates in Havana's filthy Principe Prison rioted twice, setting fire to bedding, and relatives of political prisoners in La Cabana Fortress learned that 30 Castro gunslingers, in a predawn raid, had ordered the prisoners stripped naked, then had jabbed them with bayonets and beaten them with clubs and rifles. Castro's bag of political prisoners: 6,000, or three times the peak number under Dictator Fulgencio Batista.

I will incur the wrath of academic's & the knowledgeable literari, but I am not a fan of Norman Mailer, he may have been and still is a cause celeb, but taking Schiller with him to Muther Russia should have been a warning sign to the research community that he was going to do a hack job on Oswald. I do believe he even sorta kinda [fessed up] so basically Oswald's Ghost is a book for the generic I want to know everything about Oswald, that the Priscilla McMillan crowd feels "comfortable with."

Enough said

[Greg Parker]

The April 12, 1962 issue of the Galveston Daily News featured an article concerning Robert Taber, Richard Gibson and the Fair Play for Cuba Committee entitled “Unfinished Chore for Bob” written by Fulton Lewis Jr.

---- Attorney General Robert Kennedy has been back home for more than a month now and he has some unfinished business. The advice comes from Florida Congressman Bill Cramer, who is critical of Kennedy for not having placed the Fair Play for Committee on his list of subversive organizations. “Fair Play” was founded more than two years ago by Robert Taber, an ex-convict now on the Havana payroll of Fidel Castro.

Taber, once sentenced to 30 years in prison for kidnapping, armed robbery and auto theft, founded ”Fair Play” with a group of New York leftist’s. One of these was Joanne Grant an attractive young Negro, whose service in the Communist Party dates back several years. Long before Fidel Castro won victory in Cuba, Miss Grant was to be found in Peiping, huddling with Red Chinese Premiere Chou-En-lai

Miss Grant was secretary of the New York “Fair Play” chapter in its early days.

Soon after its inception, the senate internal security subcommittee opened an investigation into ”Fair Play.” It called Miss Grant, who hid behind the fifth amendment when asked about Communist control over the organization.

It called scores of “Fair Play” operatives from coast to coast, discovered that Communist participation in the group was rampant. In Chicago veteran party hack Dick Crilley helped run the show. In Cleveland, the wife of Ohio’s Communist Party chairman was a wheelhorse. In Detroit, the situation was similar.

About this time, Taber skipped the country, to avoid prosecution by the Justice Department, for failure to register as a foreign agent. At the same time, federal agents were studying his testimony for possible perjury action. Taber had sworn that Castro gold did not, finance his operation. Testimony to the contrary by an old sidekick, sent Taber Havana - bound. He pounds a typewriter for Castro’s official “Prensa Libre.” at the present time and was wounded while acting as a correspondent with the Cuban army during the invasion last April. Taber left with $19,000 in “Fair Play” funds and co-founder Richard Gibson took over. Gibson, like Taber is a former CBS newsman. In earlier years he was pretty much an educational bum, studying at Kenyon College for a year, before being given the boot for failure to pay his bills.

He then studied in Rome for a year on a scholarship paid for by the John H. Whitney Foundation. Four years later he was at Paris’ Sorbonne

on the G.I. Bill of Rights, He studied at Columbia University with bills paid by CBS. Gibson is violently anti-American. He makes no apology for the fact that Communist agents run the “Fair Play” show from coast to coast.

Rep. Cramer thinks that Bobby Kennedy is lax in not having placed “Fair Play” on the attorney general’s list. The senate internal security subcommittee which probed “Fair Play” for 14 month’s calls the

group a Communist organization.

So does John Edgar Hoover, of Mr. Kennedy’s justice department. FBI Director Hoover, in his annual report for the fiscal year 1961, said: “FBI investigations also have shown that the ‘Fair Play for Cuba Committee’ has been heavily infiltrated by the Communist party and the Socialist Workers party and these parties have actually organized some chapters of the committee”. Cramer asked Kennedy to act on ‘Fair Play’ more than a month ago. To date he had heard nothing from the President’s brother.

Robert: Looking back at the article decades later, there is the realization that despite the volume of books on the Kennedy assassination, my experience is that comparitively there is not much coverage given to the origins and the birth pangs, if you will, of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, other than the cursory mentions of Lee Oswald’s involvement and interaction with the group, I am sure there are some [or a lot] of exceptions, but unfortunately for myself, I have had to dig quite a bit, without a great deal of success to discover enough information to approach having an adequate knowledge of that part of the organization, i.e. facts that are outside the scope of “Oswald and the FPCC” per se.

There are more than hints that the FPCC might have been, what’s the word compromised, in a sense, from the very beginning insofar as some of it’s representatives, appear not to have been the simpleton? traditional disgruntled leftist, more commonly [in those day’s] referred to as a “communist,” particulary in the southern part of the United States.

Tie Magazine Monday, Apr. 18, 1960

Winning Friends

For the intellectual, politician or celebrity, a tempting proposition this year is a trip to Fidel Castro's Cuba, where a visitor can see real revolution in action while enjoying the uncrowded comforts of a winter resort. The invitation usually comes from an overseas official of Castro's July 26 movement, who arrives bearing a free, first-class ticket on Cubana Airlines and free reservations at such luxury hotels as the Habana Hilton. At rum-punch receptions and over dinners of Morro crab, the friendly visitor soaks up heady talk of revolution, sometimes from the "maximum leader" himself.

The Loud Praisers. Trips are arranged to schools, hospitals and agricultural coops, or to beaches, cockfights and nightclubs. All that the visitor need contribute is a little quotable praise of Cuba or criticism of the U.S.—and the kind of visitor selected is usually glad to oblige.

Joe Louis says "there is no place in the world except Cuba where the Negro can go in the wintertime with absolutely no discrimination." Jack Paar (who paid his own way down) deplores the "untruthful things I've read about what was happening in Cuba. This man Castro is beloved by these people." Existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre called the Cuban revolution "the most original I have known" and dismissed the U.S. as a "headless nation."

The Fair Players. All this sentiment got a loud echo in Manhattan last week from something called "the Fair Play for Cuba Committee," a group of 28 including Sartre, his friend Simone de Beauvoir, Novelists Norman Mailer and Truman Capote (who explained that "my stepfather is Cuban"), and British-born New Yorker Drama Critic Kenneth Tynan ("Americans tend to judge a regime on the extent to which it likes America"). In a seven-column, $4,725 ad in the New York Times, the Fair Players charged that the U.S. press is deliberately distorting the news from Cuba. Item: press reports of Communism in the Castro government are "consistently used to create a smoke screen behind which the social objectives of the Cuban revolution can be attacked and sabotaged."

The nominal head of the committee was Author Waldo (America Hispana) Frank, but the real organizer was Robert Taber, a Columbia Broadcasting System newsman, and one of a group of U.S. journalists who won gold medals from Castro for getting through to interview him in his Sierra Maestra days. Frank has been a guest of Castro, and Taber of a Cuban publisher. Taber drew up the ad, and Frank mailed it out to his many friends among the intellectual set. They got enough names and money to pay the bill, but a more impressive list could be made from those who ignored the plea or pointedly turned it down. This group ranged from Ernest Hemingway, Carl Sandburg and Jacques Maritain to Eleanor Roosevelt and Luis Munoz Marin. Revealing the side of Cuba that Castro's ad-signing supporters do not seem to see, the Cuban Ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, Andres Vargas Gomez, quit his post last week charging that the government is "totalitarian and Communist oriented." And Commentator Luis Conte Aguero, whose Cuban TV rating was once up to Paar, fled to U.S. exile because, he said, Castro is now a "prisoner of pro-Communists." Inmates in Havana's filthy Principe Prison rioted twice, setting fire to bedding, and relatives of political prisoners in La Cabana Fortress learned that 30 Castro gunslingers, in a predawn raid, had ordered the prisoners stripped naked, then had jabbed them with bayonets and beaten them with clubs and rifles. Castro's bag of political prisoners: 6,000, or three times the peak number under Dictator Fulgencio Batista.

I will incur the wrath of academic's & the knowledgeable literari, but I am not a fan of Norman Mailer, he may have been and still is a cause celeb, but taking Schiller with him to Muther Russia should have been a warning sign to the research community that he was going to do a hack job on Oswald. I do believe he even sorta kinda [fessed up] so basically Oswald's Ghost is a book for the generic I want to know everything about Oswald, that the Priscilla McMillan crowd feels "comfortable with."

Enough said

Robert, good stuff. Just to add a bit to it... the Fulton Lewis story was written for him by the FBI.

On Capote and the ad: This is from "Truman Capote: Conversations"

"At the time, I honestly thought Castro was an honorable young insurgent who had been unjustly abused in the American press. So when I was asked to sign this Fair Play for Cuba advertisement, I agreed, although only on the condition that the committee assure me that they were paying for the space themselves without any assistance from the Castro government. They swore they were a legitimate organization with no ties to Havana, so I lent them my name. But sometime afterward, I discovered that the advertisement had been paid for by the Cuban government; the money was passed in cash to the Fair Play organizers by Raulito Roa, the son of Cuba's foreign minister. Naturally, I felt that the officers of the committee had been deceitful and unscrupulous, and I regret getting involved with them."

The above being excerpted for the book from a Playboy interview...

Capote goes on to say he felt that Castro had falsely claimed at the beginning to be a democratic agrarian reformer and had been in fact, a Communist all along...

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

Burton Hersh, in Bobby and J. Edgar, mentions Fulton Lewis Jr.--along the lines of Greg's comment-- as one of the favorite journalists of the China Lobby via Nichols, and Hoover:

Jack Kennedy was sounding off from the sheet music provided by the China Lobby. The cry was abroad to hunt the traitors down

responsible for the collapes of Chiang Kai-Shek's government on the mainland, to make somebody pay for the loss of China. A

pack of attack columnists, mostly for the Hearst publications and the Chicago Tribune--Westbrook Pegler, George Sokolsky, Walter

Winchell, Walter Trohan, Fulton Lewis Jr. -- now thought they knew which names to name, many handed over quietly to friendly

press and selcted member of Congress by Louis Nichols, J. Edgar Hoover's publicity bagman. (p. 103)

Edited May 31, 2007 by Nathaniel Heidenheimer

[John Dolva]

From MSC Files topic; http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.ph...ost&p=51311

David: "The "far right" also kept a close eye on the "far left." I believe that this is one of the roles that Guy Banister and Associates played after Banister left the N.O. police. Banister had previously (1957) testified as an expert witness before the LUAC about the infiltraton of the communists into the civil rights movement. A look at Banister's files show that he did indeed track such groups and individuals. If my memory is working today, some of Banitser's files were taken by the Louisiana State Police and some were given to Kent Courtney (good friend of Gen Walker). LHO may have had a small role working for Banister in this capacity."

Bannister was recommended to the Sovereignty Commission Jackson Mississippi as investigator in March 64 by a John Sullivan to track guns, there is indication he was working for them at least by May '64. The thing that the SC's did was to monitor and collect intel on the left and anyone who threatened segregation. Thye were heavily involved with Walker, Eastland, Barnett the JBS etc. They had a number of exFBI working for them, apparently Bannister was one of these.

The person assigned by the M.S.C. to investigate the FPCC in 1961 was A.L. Hopkins.

In June 30, 1961. The MSC. received a list of 230 FPCC members from R.J. Strickland, Chief Investigator of the Florida Legislative Investigation Committee. (I have trouble finding out if even a relative is coming on a flight. This man had access to full planeload lists. Would this have been easy in the 60's?)

What this means is that the MSC. was coooperating with intelligence agencies and informants across the south in investigating and infiltrating and seeking to disrupt the FPCC as early as 1961.

It doesn't seem unreasonable that the Louisiana Sovereignty Commission, under John Deer, would be supplying member lists of FPCC members from that state as well. Add in the Postal Investigators and other sympathetic elements in the Police, Highway Patrol, State Departments and the FBI one has a comprehensive coverage.

Edited May 31, 2007 by John Dolva

[William O'Neil]

From MSC Files topic; http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.ph...ost&p=51311

David: "The "far right" also kept a close eye on the "far left." I believe that this is one of the roles that Guy Banister and Associates played after Banister left the N.O. police. Banister had previously (1957) testified as an expert witness before the LUAC about the infiltraton of the communists into the civil rights movement. A look at Banister's files show that he did indeed track such groups and individuals. If my memory is working today, some of Banitser's files were taken by the Louisiana State Police and some were given to Kent Courtney (good friend of Gen Walker). LHO may have had a small role working for Banister in this capacity."

Bannister was recommended to the Sovereignty Commission Jackson Mississippi as investigator in March 64 by a John Sullivan to track guns, there is indication he was working for them at least by May '64. The thing that the SC's did was to monitor and collect intel on the left and anyone who threatened segregation. Thye were heavily involved with Walker, Eastland, Barnett the JBS etc. They had a number of exFBI working for them, apparently Bannister was one of these.

The person assigned by the M.S.C. to investigate the FPCC in 1961 was A.L. Hopkins.

In June 30, 1961. The MSC. received a list of 230 FPCC members from R.J. Strickland, Chief Investigator of the Florida Legislative Investigation Committee. (I have trouble finding out if even a relative is coming on a flight. This man had access to full planeload lists. Would this have been easy in the 60's?)

What this means is that the MSC. was coooperating with intelligence agencies and informants across the south in investigating and infiltrating and seeking to disrupt the FPCC as early as 1961.

It doesn't seem unreasonable that the Louisiana Sovereignty Commission, under John Deer, would be supplying member lists of FPCC members from that state as well. Add in the Postal Investigators and other sympathetic elements in the Police, Highway Patrol, State Departments and the FBI one has a comprehensive coverage.

John, right again. One small thing.... Banister testified for The Joint Legislative Committee on Segragation (JLC) , run by Wille Rainach. LUAC didn't exist yet.

[Antti Hynonen]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_M._Rainach

Willie Rainach.

William O'Neil Posted Yesterday, 07:29 PM

QUOTE(John Dolva @ May 31 2007, 11:40 AM)

From MSC Files topic; http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.ph...ost&p=51311

David: "The "far right" also kept a close eye on the "far left." I believe that this is one of the roles that Guy Banister and Associates played after Banister left the N.O. police. Banister had previously (1957) testified as an expert witness before the LUAC about the infiltraton of the communists into the civil rights movement. A look at Banister's files show that he did indeed track such groups and individuals. If my memory is working today, some of Banitser's files were taken by the Louisiana State Police and some were given to Kent Courtney (good friend of Gen Walker). LHO may have had a small role working for Banister in this capacity."

Bannister was recommended to the Sovereignty Commission Jackson Mississippi as investigator in March 64 by a John Sullivan to track guns, there is indication he was working for them at least by May '64. The thing that the SC's did was to monitor and collect intel on the left and anyone who threatened segregation. Thye were heavily involved with Walker, Eastland, Barnett the JBS etc. They had a number of exFBI working for them, apparently Bannister was one of these.

The person assigned by the M.S.C. to investigate the FPCC in 1961 was A.L. Hopkins.

In June 30, 1961. The MSC. received a list of 230 FPCC members from R.J. Strickland, Chief Investigator of the Florida Legislative Investigation Committee. (I have trouble finding out if even a relative is coming on a flight. This man had access to full planeload lists. Would this have been easy in the 60's?)

What this means is that the MSC. was coooperating with intelligence agencies and informants across the south in investigating and infiltrating and seeking to disrupt the FPCC as early as 1961.

It doesn't seem unreasonable that the Louisiana Sovereignty Commission, under John Deer, would be supplying member lists of FPCC members from that state as well. Add in the Postal Investigators and other sympathetic elements in the Police, Highway Patrol, State Departments and the FBI one has a comprehensive coverage.

John, right again. One small thing.... Banister testified for The Joint Legislative Committee on Segragation (JLC) , run by Wille Rainach. LUAC didn't exist yet.

[John Dolva]

Antti: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_M._Rainach

Willie Rainach. Interesting character, Antti.

"Rainach was born as "William Odom"*** in Kentwood in Tangipahoa Parish, east of Baton Rouge"

"Rainach,..., founded the first White Citizens' Council"

"The Rainachs lived on a 450-acre farm near Summerfield"

"In 1959, Rainach delivered a racially inflammatory speech before the legislature in which he professed to "love the [expletive deleted](presumably 'n': my comment), but I know he can't run this country. The breeding in him does not allow him to run a civilization, and I won't let our civilization go to ruin." " - relevant to the eugenics issues

A prominent theme among Black Civil Rights activists was that they did not care to be 'loved' by whites, just simply to be able to move in society without fear of being beaten or killed.

"Governor Earl Long, considered more progressive on race than many Louisiana politicians of his era but uncouth in language, lectured Rainach in a well-known exchange: "Willie, one of these days you gonna retire and go back home. You'll take off your boots, wash your feet, stare at the moon, and get close to God. Then will you realize that niggers are human beings too."

Long further defended his own racial policies: If the nation "would leave us alone and quit brainwashing the colored people, we'd solve this ourselves. Yes, I like colored people, and I know there ain't many of them can vote for me either. Now I ain't saying this for votes. I am the best friend the colored man, and the poor white man, and the middle class, and the millionaire, if he wants to do right, ever had in the governor's office in the history of this state. You just check. You just check." "

This theme of appealing to the poor, and to the millionaire, "IF he wants to do right" is also a theme of the Nazis or the "National Socialist German Workers' Party" which was funded by millionaires throughout the 'free world' and whose agenda was to destroy the Communists. Typical 'Goebblerism'.

"Rainach was named "Man of the Year" by the Homer Lions Club in 1974. In 1959, he received the "Americanism Award" from the Caddo-Bossier chapter of the newly-formed Young Americans for Freedom."

Interesting. The YAF would become the prominent opponent to the SDS, and the NSA* (who were destroyed by the leaking of info that its leadership received funds from the CIA.)National Students Association. This issue also masked the much larger CIA contributions to the Latin/South American Dictatorships. When the dust settled the YAF continued on its merry way making little reference to the issue.

"Rainach's suicide:

Rainach, who had been in ill health, shot himself in the right temple with a .38 caliber pistol on a Thursday morning, January 26, 1978, in his backyard. His body was found by the maid. His wife, Mable Justin Fincher Rainach (May 26, 1915 -- January 1995), was shopping in Homer at the time. The coroner ruled the death a suicide. Though his suicide may have been personal in regard to his declining health, it was somewhat reminiscent of Edmund Ruffin, a Confederate firebrand who also took his own life to avoid living in the northern-dominated South of 1865. Rainach was never reconciled to civil rights and principles of racial equality."

"... I do not feel the two societies should mix. I wish it were possible for whites and blacks to live together, but it just isn't."

An start of an exploration of events around the time of Rainach's suicide:

Some events of 1978

- the HSCA investigations were under way

- FISA law was implemented in 1978 in part because of revelations that the National Security Agency was spying domestically.

- March 6 - American porn publisher Larry Flynt is shot and paralyzed in Lawrenceville, Georgia.

EDIT::

***Odom:

http://karws.gso.uri.edu/Marsh/Jfk-conspiracy/time.htm

11/23/63 FBI SA Edward C. Palmer obtains original copies of letters by LHO to SECNAV and USMC regarding discharge - letters obtained from William E. Odom, OASD (PUB AFFAIRS) - is this Bill Odom future ACSI of US Army??

Also a Robert Odo(u)m in Oswalds address book.

_________________

Truman Capote:

"Capote goes on to say he felt that Castro had falsely claimed at the beginning to be a democratic agrarian reformer and had been in fact, a Communist all along..."

an odd comment by someone one would expect perhaps to know better?

A communist is essentially a 'democratic agrarian reformer'. It's Agrarian reform and the redistribution of land that is usually high on the agenda along with a grass roots democracy following a successful socialist revolution. It was the seizing of land in Cuba and an offer to pay the previous owners according to their tax receipts which vastly undervalued the land and kept profits high that was a significant parting of ways between Cuba and USA interests.

Similarly it was Agrarian reform in Nicaragua that triggered the terror campaign of the USA-CIA Reagan sponsored hard-drug dealers, the Contra Terrorists.

Castro was a well educated member of the working class, and he skillfully guided the Cuban struggle for independence. I have little doubt that he was a socialist all along. Let's say he 'pulled a swifty' and got away with it.

Edited June 1, 2007 by John Dolva

[William O'Neil]

Antti: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_M._Rainach

Willie Rainach. Interesting character, Antti.

"Rainach was born as "William Odom"*** in Kentwood in Tangipahoa Parish, east of Baton Rouge"

"Rainach,..., founded the first White Citizens' Council"

"The Rainachs lived on a 450-acre farm near Summerfield"

"In 1959, Rainach delivered a racially inflammatory speech before the legislature in which he professed to "love the [expletive deleted](presumably 'n': my comment), but I know he can't run this country. The breeding in him does not allow him to run a civilization, and I won't let our civilization go to ruin." " - relevant to the eugenics issues

A prominent theme among Black Civil Rights activists was that they did not care to be 'loved' by whites, just simply to be able to move in society without fear of being beaten or killed.

"Governor Earl Long, considered more progressive on race than many Louisiana politicians of his era but uncouth in language, lectured Rainach in a well-known exchange: "Willie, one of these days you gonna retire and go back home. You'll take off your boots, wash your feet, stare at the moon, and get close to God. Then will you realize that niggers are human beings too."

Long further defended his own racial policies: If the nation "would leave us alone and quit brainwashing the colored people, we'd solve this ourselves. Yes, I like colored people, and I know there ain't many of them can vote for me either. Now I ain't saying this for votes. I am the best friend the colored man, and the poor white man, and the middle class, and the millionaire, if he wants to do right, ever had in the governor's office in the history of this state. You just check. You just check." "

This theme of appealing to the poor, and to the millionaire, "IF he wants to do right" is also a theme of the Nazis or the "National Socialist German Workers' Party" which was funded by millionaires throughout the 'free world' and whose agenda was to destroy the Communists. Typical 'Goebblerism'.

"Rainach was named "Man of the Year" by the Homer Lions Club in 1974. In 1959, he received the "Americanism Award" from the Caddo-Bossier chapter of the newly-formed Young Americans for Freedom."

Interesting. The YAF would become the prominent opponent to the SDS, and the NSA* (who were destroyed by the leaking of info that its leadership received funds from the CIA.)National Students Association. This issue also masked the much larger CIA contributions to the Latin/South American Dictatorships. When the dust settled the YAF continued on its merry way making little reference to the issue.

"Rainach's suicide:

Rainach, who had been in ill health, shot himself in the right temple with a .38 caliber pistol on a Thursday morning, January 26, 1978, in his backyard. His body was found by the maid. His wife, Mable Justin Fincher Rainach (May 26, 1915 -- January 1995), was shopping in Homer at the time. The coroner ruled the death a suicide. Though his suicide may have been personal in regard to his declining health, it was somewhat reminiscent of Edmund Ruffin, a Confederate firebrand who also took his own life to avoid living in the northern-dominated South of 1865. Rainach was never reconciled to civil rights and principles of racial equality."

"... I do not feel the two societies should mix. I wish it were possible for whites and blacks to live together, but it just isn't."

An start of an exploration of events around the time of Rainach's suicide:

Some events of 1978

- the HSCA investigations were under way

- FISA law was implemented in 1978 in part because of revelations that the National Security Agency was spying domestically.

- March 6 - American porn publisher Larry Flynt is shot and paralyzed in Lawrenceville, Georgia.

EDIT::

***Odom:

http://karws.gso.uri.edu/Marsh/Jfk-conspiracy/time.htm

11/23/63 FBI SA Edward C. Palmer obtains original copies of letters by LHO to SECNAV and USMC regarding discharge - letters obtained from William E. Odom, OASD (PUB AFFAIRS) - is this Bill Odom future ACSI of US Army??

Also a Robert Odo(u)m in Oswalds address book.

_________________

Truman Capote:

"Capote goes on to say he felt that Castro had falsely claimed at the beginning to be a democratic agrarian reformer and had been in fact, a Communist all along..."

an odd comment by someone one would expect perhaps to know better?

A communist is essentially a 'democratic agrarian reformer'. It's Agrarian reform and the redistribution of land that is usually high on the agenda along with a grass roots democracy following a successful socialist revolution. It was the seizing of land in Cuba and an offer to pay the previous owners according to their tax receipts which vastly undervalued the land and kept profits high that was a significant parting of ways between Cuba and USA interests.

Similarly it was Agrarian reform in Nicaragua that triggered the terror campaign of the USA-CIA Reagan sponsored hard-drug dealers, the Contra Terrorists.

Castro was a well educated member of the working class, and he skillfully guided the Cuban struggle for independence. I have little doubt that he was a socialist all along. Let's say he 'pulled a swifty' and got away with it.

Willie was also a fan of the "Christian Identity" school of thought, brought to him courtesy of William Potter Gale.

Me thinks ol' Willie ate his pistol when he heard about the HSCA investigations.

[Greg Parker]

Perhaps this is the real reason the FPCC collapsed after the assassination?

From "Low Intensity Operations" by Frank Kitson pp 88-89:

It is far easier to penetrate a subversive movement [which uses] non-violent means than it is when the movement is wholly clandestine because of the number of people overtly involved. Although this cannot be a reason for containing it in this form indefinitely, it is worth considering whether it should be broken up before some headway has been made towards discovering the identity of the people who are really behind it

In June 30, 1961. The MSC. received a list of 230 FPCC members from R.J. Strickland, Chief Investigator of the Florida Legislative Investigation Committee. (I have trouble finding out if even a relative is coming on a flight. This man had access to full planeload lists. Would this have been easy in the 60's?)

- JD

According to Lee, there were no membership lists kept, and not even a proper mailing list:

Mr. LEE - Well, it is like I say. As for membership, this is an almost impossible situation in view of the fact that we didn't conduct a membership file or a duplicate membership card system and we just had mailing lists. In fact the mailing lists-- even the mailing lists wouldn't tell very much, if anything, and that was just a case, anybody who thought somebody should receive a communication gave the name of somebody, in fact for now deceased Governor Lehman was on that list, Senators and Congressmen were placed on the mailing list, everybody and his brother who we thought should be---well, we thought some reason should receive the material which we sent out, we just sent material. It could be anybody. And like I say, stuff went to all over the country, just automatically, just did large mailings to every place we could think of, dream of or hope for in any of our activities of mailing.

[Larry Hancock]

The FPCC office was black bagged on at least one occasion in the fall of 1963 to produce

mailing addresses for a new CIA project going into action against them outside the U.S.

That appears to be the reason the FBI had Oswald's letter to the FPCC in their possession

at the time of the assassination.

But beyond that the regional military intelligence organizations were maintaining lists of FPCC members

that they could identify as well as target lists of individuals traveling to or attempting to travel to

Cuba.

If you check the events diagrams/charts on the SWHT web site you will see references to the various

anti-FPCC projects and the book has end notes identifying the military intel sources for this tracking.

-- Larry

Perhaps this is the real reason the FPCC collapsed after the assassination?

From "Low Intensity Operations" by Frank Kitson pp 88-89:

It is far easier to penetrate a subversive movement [which uses] non-violent means than it is when the movement is wholly clandestine because of the number of people overtly involved. Although this cannot be a reason for containing it in this form indefinitely, it is worth considering whether it should be broken up before some headway has been made towards discovering the identity of the people who are really behind it

In June 30, 1961. The MSC. received a list of 230 FPCC members from R.J. Strickland, Chief Investigator of the Florida Legislative Investigation Committee. (I have trouble finding out if even a relative is coming on a flight. This man had access to full planeload lists. Would this have been easy in the 60's?)

- JD

According to Lee, there were no membership lists kept, and not even a proper mailing list:

Mr. LEE - Well, it is like I say. As for membership, this is an almost impossible situation in view of the fact that we didn't conduct a membership file or a duplicate membership card system and we just had mailing lists. In fact the mailing lists-- even the mailing lists wouldn't tell very much, if anything, and that was just a case, anybody who thought somebody should receive a communication gave the name of somebody, in fact for now deceased Governor Lehman was on that list, Senators and Congressmen were placed on the mailing list, everybody and his brother who we thought should be---well, we thought some reason should receive the material which we sent out, we just sent material. It could be anybody. And like I say, stuff went to all over the country, just automatically, just did large mailings to every place we could think of, dream of or hope for in any of our activities of mailing.

[Greg Parker]

The FPCC office was black bagged on at least one occasion in the fall of 1963 to produce

mailing addresses for a new CIA project going into action against them outside the U.S.

That appears to be the reason the FBI had Oswald's letter to the FPCC in their possession

at the time of the assassination.

But beyond that the regional military intelligence organizations were maintaining lists of FPCC members

that they could identify as well as target lists of individuals traveling to or attempting to travel to

Cuba.

If you check the events diagrams/charts on the SWHT web site you will see references to the various

anti-FPCC projects and the book has end notes identifying the military intel sources for this tracking.

- LH

Thanks Larry.

My point was that Lee lied. If, as I believe, the FPCC was either set up, or infiltrated at the very start, for the purpose of counter-intelligence operations, being able to easily identify supporters via membership list or mailing lists would be one purpose.

I couldn't find the appropriate chart on your website. Can you tell me when MI target lists of those traveling to (or attempting to) travel to Cuba began to be collected - was it prior to the travel ban instituted on Feb 1963?

[John Dolva]

The MSC has documents assigning Hopkins to the job in 1961, including the list of the june 1961 trip. The MSC had access through informants to Military files, the documents proving this are there.. The MSC was also likely a public front for a 'supposedly defunct' Mississippi Bureau of Investigation. Col. Birdsong, figures in this.

Then of course as all this revolved around the Southern Politician's and Gentry's support for their Man on the Horseback, Brig. Maj. Gen(ret.) E. A. Walker. There was no shortage of persons to connect to Mil Intel. Including Walker's lawyer Gen. Watts and others in various military positions. According to Peter, Harry D. Holmes was one of these (Mil Intel).

(From memory there was an informant at a Florida airport. There's a story of waterlogged basement files emerging years later, I can't remember the details nor at this point find the source. Also, again from memory, there was an internal order at some point to destroy FPCC NY files. It's covered in another topic. I'll try to hunt it up.)

Edited June 2, 2007 by John Dolva

[Larry Hancock]

Greg, I definitely agree with your point and suspect the FPCC was penetrated from the very

beginning - if not actively organized by intel connected individuals.

On the chart...my mistake...its not on the site; may have been just too darn big to display

correctly, I'll check. But here are some details:

Documents show that as far back as 60-61 the 111th MIG was compiling a list of

all persons going to or from Cuba...(special note was taken if they showed

any signs of associating with the FPCC). The other MIG's were very likely doing the

same thing. In early 61 David Phillips set up the first sting

against the FPCC using an individual that was connected to a newly forming

chapter. In May of 61 the FBI ran a leadership disruption campaign against

the FPCC, mailing conflicting material in an effort to stir up ill will and in

December of the same year they conducted a disinformation mailing program

against the membership.

And in the fall of 63, as Newman discoverd, the CIA and FBI were cooperating

in a new effort against the FPCC outside the US and the CIA requested FBI

obtain and provide names and addresses for that effort.

The FPCC office was black bagged on at least one occasion in the fall of 1963 to produce

mailing addresses for a new CIA project going into action against them outside the U.S.

That appears to be the reason the FBI had Oswald's letter to the FPCC in their possession

at the time of the assassination.

But beyond that the regional military intelligence organizations were maintaining lists of FPCC members

that they could identify as well as target lists of individuals traveling to or attempting to travel to

Cuba.

If you check the events diagrams/charts on the SWHT web site you will see references to the various

anti-FPCC projects and the book has end notes identifying the military intel sources for this tracking.

- LH

Thanks Larry.

My point was that Lee lied. If, as I believe, the FPCC was either set up, or infiltrated at the very start, for the purpose of counter-intelligence operations, being able to easily identify supporters via membership list or mailing lists would be one purpose.

I couldn't find the appropriate chart on your website. Can you tell me when MI target lists of those traveling to (or attempting to) travel to Cuba began to be collected - was it prior to the travel ban instituted on Feb 1963?