Were Castro Plots Hatched at Glen Ora?

[William Kelly]

http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2009/10...t-glen-ora.html

Were Castro Plots Hatched at Glen Ora? – By William Kelly

In his Washingtonian article on RFK and the plots to kill Castro, Evan Thomas wrote “…. ‘Please don't expect that any one of these things is going to be a catalyst'," recalled Ted Shackley, the Miami station chief, quoting the CIA’s Cuban covert operations chief Desmond Fitzgerald, “But FitzGerald felt under pressure to make these things work, and the pressure came from Robert Kennedy. He'd say, ‘I saw Bobby,' or ‘I ran into Bobby. I saw him in Middleburg. Here's what we got to crank up for next month.' We would say, tactfully. We can make it work. But the question is, will these events bring Castro down?’” (1)

“I saw him in Middleburg. Here’s what we got to crank up for next month,” is what Fitzgerald is quoted as saying about where the plans were drawn up for the CIA’s covert operations against Cuba. Middleburg.

Middleburg, Virginia, is an old and historic town a few hours drive west of Washington, in upper crust Virginia horse country, where you need two hundred acres to build a house, and the location of Glen Ora, a large horse farm, leased by the President elect Kennedy as a weekend retreat. But is it where the plots against Castro were hatched before they backfired at Dealey Plaza?

Des Fitz is quoted as telling Halpern that it was RFK who was ratcheting up the anti-Castro plots, that “I ran into Bobby. I saw him at Middleburg. Here’s what we got to crank up for next month….”

Looking at the official Presidential schedule, Glen Ora was a frequent destination for President Kennedy, both by helicopter, approximately 25 minutes from the White House lawn, or by car, a two hour drive. (2)

Middleburg and Glen Ora were JFK’s concession to his wife Jackie, a horse women who fit nicely into the stiff, reserved, blue blood upper crust Middleburg hunt club society. (3)

The Kennedys spent weekends in the fall and winter at Glen Ora, even during the Cuban Missile Crisis when Kennedy tried to maintain his normal agenda, and he continued to the run nation’s business from Glen Ora up until his death, and if these reports are correct, he may have planned the operations there that ultimately led to his murder. (4)

Glen Ora was owned by Mrs. Gladys Raymond Tartiere, who it is said, was persuaded to lease her estate to Kennedy by William Walton, a mutual friend, and former Time-Life war correspondent. (5)

The Kennedys seemed to like Glen Ora and Middleburg, and wanted to own a home there, rather than lease one, but as Clark Clifford mentions in his memoirs, Mrs. Tartiere “did not wish to sell.” (6)

So they purchased some land nearby and lived at Glen Ora during the construction of their own home, which they called Wexford, named after the town of Kennedy’s Irish roots. While at Glen Ora, they tried to enjoy life outside of the Washington limelight. As Sally B. Smith wrote “…For Jack’s forty-fourth birthday on May 29, Jackie conspired with Paul Fout to create a three-hold golf course at Glen Ora – ‘rather long & difficult ones – so it will be a challenge to play and not just so easy that one gets tired of it.’ To further amuse Jack, she asked that the holes have Confederate flags that would ‘not be visible from the road.’ The Bradlees visited Glen Ora on May 20 for a birthday celebration, and Ben and JFK inaugurated the course, which had grown to four holes ‘9,000 square yards of pasture, filled with small hills, big rocks, and even a swamp,’ Bradlee recalled. JFK ‘shot the course record, a thirty-seven for four holes.’” (7)

Glen Ora had an interesting history, especially the background of its owners. As Tom Scully notes, “Gladys Rosenthal Byfield Tartiere. Aka Mrs. Raymond Tartiere, had been the JFK family's ‘landlady’ since late 1960, when she leased her 400 acres, Middleburg, VA estate, ‘Glen Ora’, to JFK and Jackie.” Her son Byfield, Jr. “was a US Army Captain in WWII, a member of OSS S1, according to the memoirs of David KE Bruce. In 1943, Byfield was the best man in the wedding of William H.G. Fitzgerald, Lt. Cmdr, USN, and later a philanthropist and US Ambassador to Ireland.” (8)

William Henry Gerald Fitzgerald is not the father of Desmond Fitzgerald, the CIA officer, but another Desmond Fitzgerald who is still alive and living in Connecticut.

The son of JFK’s landlady, Gladys Rosenthal Byfield Tartiere, Ernest Byfield, Jr. was an OSS hand under David Bruce and the best man at the wedding William Henry Gerald Fitzgerald. (9)

While it would be interesting to know if these two Fitzgerald families are related, and if either is related to JFK, whose Fitzgerald side of the family came from Wexford, Ireland (See: The Kennedys and the Fitzgeralds).

Desmond Fitzgerald of the CIA was said to be a cousin to the Kennedys, but he may have been just a good friend with an Irish name.

In any case, the son of JFK's landlady, Ernest Byfield, Jr., was an OSS hand who served with David Bruce and was the best man at the wedding of William H.G. Fitzgerald.

Byfield, Jr. was also associated with Henry Crown and the General Dynamics contract for the F-111, and may have had something to do with Bobby and Billy Hale’s breaking into the apartment of Judith Campbell Exner’s Los Angeles apartment. Exner, who had married golf pro Dan Exner, had previously been the cut-out between JFK and Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana before the election, and it was Giancana who was involved with John Rosselli and Carlos Marcello in the early CIA plots to kill Castro. Bobby and Billy Hale’s father, I. B. Hale, was a former pro football player and FBI agent who was head of security at General Dynamics.

The Hale twins reportedly broke into Exner’s apartment and placed a wiretapping bug while it was under surveillance by the FBI, but when the FBI ran a trace on the Hale’s car, and discovered their father was I.B. Hale, friend of J. Edgar Hover, they never acted on it, though there’s records of this incident in the official files.

[For more on the Hale Twins, see:

http://outside.away.com/outside/culture/20...-pilgrim-4.html]

Joseph Califano, the assistant to the Secretary of the Army who worked with the Army support for the CIA’s covert operations against Cuba, said that the military had bugged the White House and overheard all of JFK’s private conversations about Cuba, which makes one wonder if they also bugged Glen Ora and knew what plans were made there as well.

If Byfield was indeed close to Crown and was involved in their investment in General Dynamics, and the black bag operation the Hale twins pulled off at Exner's apartment was on behalf of their father, head of security at General Dynamics, one wonders if Hale was working closely with Max Clark, an associate of Oswald upon his return from the Soviet Union who also worked for General Dynamics.

The implication by Sy Hersh in the Darkside of Camelot is that the Hale's burglary of Exner's apartment was part of a blackmail scheme against Kennedy to get the F-111 contract for General Dynamics, though it could have been connected to the plots to kill Castro.

If they were going to bug Exner's apartment to see what she knew, did they also bug Glen Ora to see what JFK was going to do?

Then, in a final irony, former Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara, who awarded the contract to General Dynamics, married Diana Masieri Byfield in 2004, when he was 92 and she was 74. (10)

There’s also the current owner of Glen Ora, Gladys Tartiere’s daughter Elaine Broadhead, who has used the estate in order to promote some of her radical enterprises, including the founding of the Green Party in the USA. (11).

But most significant, I think, is the allegations by Evan Thomas, that Desmond Fitzgerald, when he was head of the Cuban operations at the CIA, met with RFK at Glen Ora and planned attacks against Castro and Cuba while there. (12)

Thomas writes, “…The last of the CIA's plots to kill Castro is a truly weird tale. Following the Bay of Pigs fiasco, President Kennedy deputized his brother (also his attorney general) Robert Kennedy to personally oversee the CIA's campaign against Castro. Typical of the Kennedy administration's highly informal style, Bobby Kennedy bypassed CIA Director John McCone and demanded regular progress reports from Desmond FitzGerald, a dashing CIA officer who became head of the CIA Special Affairs Staff (SAS) at the beginning of 1963, charged with doing whatever he could to eliminate the Cuban leader. The bizarre events that were to unfold have fueled generations of Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorists.”

“The winter FitzGerald took over the Cuban operation, he made clear to his troops that he wanted results. FitzGerald's executive officer, Sam Halpern, tried to show him an organizational chart of the Special Affairs Staff, but FitzGerald said he didn't want to see it; he didn't want to be bothered with bureaucratic detail. ‘But Des. . .,’ Halpern protested. ‘You do it,’ said FitzGerald. He refused to sign the chart or even look at it.”

“During the summer and early fall, five commando raids were launched against Castro's economic infrastructure, in the hopes of "destabilizing" the regime. The raids were costly: Twenty-five CIA agents, Cuban exiles recruited as commandos, were killed or captured. Though it was doubtful that the commandos would bring down Castro by knocking down some telephone poles or by petty acts of sabotage (the negligible Cuban underground was instructed to leave faucets running and light bulbs burning to waste energy), FitzGerald was determined to keep trying.”

“We were saying, ‘Please don't expect that any one of these things is going to be a catalyst’,’ recalled Ted Shackley, the Miami station chief. ‘But FitzGerald felt under pressure to make these things work, and the pressure came from Robert Kennedy. He'd say, ‘I saw Bobby,’ or ‘I ran into Bobby. I saw him in Middleburg. Here's what we got to crank up for next month.’ We would say, tactfully. We can make it work. But the question is, will these events bring Castro down?’”

“Halpern said he began to ‘dread coming in to work in the morning,’ especially Monday mornings after FitzGerald had all weekend to “run into” Kennedy and think up his own schemes—‘all these harebrained ideas,’ as Halpern described a series of plots that would seem like black comedy when they surfaced later during the Church Committee hearings. ‘[bobby],’ said Halpern bluntly, ‘reinforced [FitzGerald's] worst instincts.’”

“By the time FitzGerald took over the Cuba operation, the CIA had pretty well given up on using the mob. The plots of Bill Harvey, FitzGerald's predecessor as head of the Cuba group, to enlist the Mafia had gone nowhere.”

Indeed, it was no longer William Harvey, Johnny Rosselli, the mob and the CIA, it was the Des Fits of the CIA and the Department of Defense, the United States Army, specifically Joe Califano and General Krulak who were coordinating covert operations against Cuba with the CIA.

And one of their “contingency plans for a coup in Cuba” was being based on a study of the Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler and take over the Third Reich that failed, a plan that included revising the continuity of government plans and blaming the assassination attempt on Communists.

If this was one of the plans discussed at Glen Ora, it wasn’t Bobby Kennedy telling Des Fitz what the next operation was to be, it was Des Fitz telling RFK and JFK what they were going to do to get rid of Castro, the Valkyrie contingency that was ultimately flipped and resulted not in the death of Castro, but what happened at Dealey Plaza.

- William Kelly

bkjfk3@yahoo.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...6010801019.html

Footnotes

(1) Evan Thomas, Washington Monthly, Dec., 1995 Bobby Kennedy’s war on Castro – CIA plot to kill Fidel Castro.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m131...27/ai_17828366/

(2) Timeline of Glen Ora History:

http://www.google.com/search?q=glen+ora+hi...e&resnum=11

Jan 20, 1963 - Kennedy from going Saturday to Glen Ora, their leased near Middleburg. Va. The Kennedys had planned lo eave by helicopter early in the for Glen Ora but finally gave up the trip around 4 pm of the Cog. ' Malcolm Kilduff, an assistant White Rouse press secretary, said,…From Kennedys Call Off Trip to Glen Ora

pqasb.pqarchiver.com/courant/access/938155732 ...

3) Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis: A Life By Donald Spoto, p. 169

“…Walton went out to see his old friend Gladys Tartiere, who owned Glen Ora, a four-hundred-acre estate near Middleburg, Virginia, about an hour from the White House. Jackie, who saw photos while she was in the hospital, liked the French-style mansion, the gardens, lawns, woods and pastures and the expansive acres for riding. She judged the place even more appealing than Merrywood and convinced her husband to apply for the lease. But Mrs. Tartiere was not at all enchanted with the idea of the First Family as tenants: she foresaw the Secret Service, the press and vast numbers of visitors roaming all over, and hence all sorts of potential damage to her estate. Already, wherever the Kennedys went, the Secret Service was sure to go, sending messages back and forth….Eventually, after considerable coaxing from Walton and Clark Clifford, one of Kennedy’s attorneys and advisors, Mrs. Tartiere agreed – but only to a one-year lease. The Kennedys took it sight unseen and furnished. At Glen Ora, Jackie escaped the pressures of Washington; there, she trained Caroline to ride, too, and there she was, as nearby residents said, “Just one of the fox hunters.”

4) The former wife of Hoy's late employer, Gladys Rosenthal Byfield Tartiere (Mrs. Raymond F. Tartiere) supposedly leased, with great reluctance, her 400 acre Middleburg, VA estate, "Glen Ora", to serve as the JFK family's "week end White House",

from late 1960 until March, 1963. JFK shut down the 1961 Bay of Pigs CIA "Op", from Glen Ora.

5) Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis: A Life‎ - Page 169 by Donald Spoto - Biography & Autobiography - 2000 - 416 pages

http://books.google.com/books?ei=fR9fSd71E...nG=Search+Books

"Eventually, after considerable coaxing from Walton and Clark Clifford, one of

Kennedy's attorneys and advisers, Mrs. Tartiere agreed — but only to a ..."; also see:

America's Queen: The Life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis‎ - Page 203

by Sarah Bradford - Biography & Autobiography - 2000 - 640 pages

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&q=...sa=N&tab=wp

"Bill Walton came up with Glen Ora, the property of his friend Gladys Tartiere,

... her photographs of the place; she liked it and rented it sight unseen. ..."

(6) Counsel to the President: A Memoir‎ - Page 362 by Clark M. Clifford, Richard C. Holbrooke - Biography & Autobiography - 1991 - 709 pages “Walton soon located a beautiful four-hundred- acre estate called Glen Ora, ...There was only one problem: its owner, Gladys Tartiere, did not wish to sell ..."

(7) Grace and Power: The Private World of the Kennedy White House By Sally Bedell Smith. P. 201

(8) Tom Scully: Byfield Jr. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=w...mp;aq=f&oq=

http://74.125.93.132/search?q=cache:5kxVli...=clnk&gl=us

(9) Philanthropist William H.G. FitzGerald Monday, January 9, 2006

William H.G. FitzGerald, 96, a Washington-based private investor who was active in philanthropies and served as ambassador to Ireland from 1992 to 1993, died Jan. 5 at George Washington University Hospital. He had an aortic aneurysm.

Mr. FitzGerald, a District resident, was involved in housing projects in the Washington area starting around 1940 and later was chairman of North American Housing Corp., which made modular homes.

He also was a senior partner at the investment firm of Hornblower, Weeks, Hemphill & Noyes and vice chairman of Financial General Bankshares, a multistate bank holding company.

William Henry Gerald FitzGerald was a Boston native and a 1931 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, where he played baseball. After brief Navy service, he attended Harvard Law School before embarking on a business career.

He returned to the Navy during World War II. From 1958 to 1960, he was deputy director for management of the International Cooperation Administration, which became the U.S. Agency for International Development.

In 1987, he started high school scholarships for inner-city children in the Catholic archdiocese of Washington. At the Washington Tennis Foundation, he established a program to mentor inner-city children. The William H.G. FitzGerald Tennis Center is named in his honor.

He also was a benefactor of the Naval Academy, where he and his wife started a program to send midshipmen to Oxford University for postgraduate study.

He was a former vice chairman of the congressionally mandated African Development Foundation, trustee of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, chairman of the White House Preservation Fund and treasurer of the Atlantic Council of the United States, an international affairs group. He was the senior member of the Order of Malta, a lay religious order of the Catholic church.

He was a member of the University Club in Washington for 71 years.

In 1949, he founded the FitzGerald Cup, an annual squash tournament between Baltimore and Washington.

He was an active tennis player until age 93.

Survivors include his wife of 63 years, Annelise Petschek FitzGerald of Washington; two children, Desmond FitzGerald of Greenwich, Conn., and Anne F. Slichter of Champaign, Ill.; and five grandchildren.

(10) The Overlooked Irony of JFK Defense Secretary Robert S McNamara's 2004 marriage to Diana Masieri Byfield. 78232, Posted by T James Scully, Wed Dec-31-69 05:00 PM

http://www.jfklancerforum.com/dc/dcboard.p...p;mesg_id=78232

It's been 4 years since the September/December marriage of former US Secretary of Defense, Robert S. McNamara, now 92, to Diana Masieri Byfield, 74.

The irony is the fact that McNamara himself may not even be aware of his recent bride's proximity to one of the controversies of the 1960's that McNamara is forever tainted by. McNamara claimed in 1963 to have been responsible, ultimately, for the decision to award the (at the time) $6 billion, TFX "joint fighter" defense contract to the financially distressed, at that time, General Dynamics.

The contract award was questioned because Boeing had underbid the General Dynamics/Grumman bid by $1 billion, and a consequence was the forced resignation, of Navy Secretary, Fred Korth, on November 1, 1963. Just a year earlier, Korth had been the president of a Texas bank that was exposed to $200 million in outstanding loans to General Dynamics. General Dynamics had merged in 1959 with Chicago financier Henry Crown's Material Service Corp. After the merger, Crown (late father of an early and principal Obama presidential campaign supporter, Lester Crown, listed on Forbes 400 in 2008 with $4.8 billion net worth....) was the largest General Dynamic's stockholder, owning 20 percent of total shares, and by 1963, he was also chairman.

(11) George Archibald - Christmas in Middleburg - December 16, 2006

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/george-archi...rg_b_36517.html

The prelude to Christmas in this historic small Virginia foxhunting and racehorse town near Washington, D.C. has been a panorama of exciting visual and musical events….

….Middleburg is the town where President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy rented Glen Ora Farm to get away from the Nation´s Capital an hour away by car so Mrs. Kennedy could ride and go hunting in the nation's premiere foxhunting community -- which People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) folks don´t mention in their trampling of people´s rights to hunt for sport.

It´s ironic that Elaine Broadhead, daughter of Mrs. Raymond Tartiere, who rented Glen Ora Farm to JFK and Jackie in 1961, has used the farm she inherited from her parents over the past several years to host a guerilla warfare training center for the Ruckus Society folks who show up at all the World Bank meetings everywhere to stage violent demonstrations and protests against free enterprise and economic capitalism.

The Ruckus folks are intolerant of free enterprise and business generally, even though their wine-sipping leftist sponsors and supporters (such as Elaine Broadhead) are rich and live in luxury because of free enterprise and capitalist business success…..

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m131...27/ai_17828366/

The last of the CIA's plots to kill Castro is a truly weird tale. Following the Bay of Pigs fiasco, President Kennedy deputized his brother (also his attorney general) Robert Kennedy to personally oversee the CIA's campaign against Castro. Typical of the Kennedy administration's highly informal style, Bobby Kennedy bypassed CIA Director John McCone and demanded regular progress reports from Desmond FitzGerald, a dashing CIA officer who became head of the CIA Special Affairs Staff (SAS) at the begining of 1963, charged with doing whatever he could to eliminate the Cuban leader. The bizarre events that were to unfold have fueled generations of Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorists.

The winter FitzGerald took over the Cuban operation, he made clear to his troops that he wanted results. FitzGerald's executive officer, Sam Halpern, tried to show him an organizational chart of the Special Affairs Staff, but FitzGerald said he didn't want to see it; he didn't want to be bothered with bureaucratic detail. "But Des. . .," Halpern protested. "You do it," said FitzGerald. He refused to sign the chart or even look at it.

During the summer and early fall, five commando raids were launched against Castro's economic infrastructure, in the hopes of "destabilizing" the regime. The raids were costly: Twenty-five CIA agents, Cuban exiles recruited as commandos, were killed or captured. Though it was doubtful that the commandos would bring down Castro by knocking down some telephone poles or by petty acts of sabotage (the negligible Cuban underground was instructed to leave faucets running and light bulbs burning to waste energy), FitzGerald was determined to keep trying.

"We were saying, `Please don't expect that any one of these things is going to be a catalyst'," recalled Ted Shackley, the Miami station chief. "But FitzGerald felt under pressure to make these things work, and the pressure came from Robert Kennedy. He'd say, `I saw Bobby,' or `I ran into Bobby. I saw him in Middleburg. Here's what we got to crank up for next month.' We would say, tactfully. We can make it work. But the question is, will these events bring Castro down?'"

Halpern said he began to "dread coming in to work in the morning," especially Monday mornings after FitzGerald had all weekend to "run into" Kennedy and think up his own schemes--"all these harebrained ideas," as Halpern described a series of plots that would seem like black comedy when they surfaced later during the Church Committee hearings. "[bobby]," said Halpern bluntly, "reinforced [FitzGerald's] worst instincts."

By the time FitzGerald took over the Cuba operation, the CIA had pretty well given up on using the mob. The plots of Bill Harvey, FitzGerald's predecessor as head of the Cuba group, to enlist the Mafia had gone nowhere.

Edited October 4, 2009 by William Kelly

[David Andrews]

It is one of the damnable circumstances of the times and the persons that we cannot trust our knowledge or sources on any of the major players involved in the above. Masses of disinformation most definitely play their part.

Can FitzGerald, whatever his social connections to the Kennedys, be trusted not to have played both ends against the middle - any more than Allen Dulles with his past among the Kennedy family? "I saw Bobby...." What subordinate was going to question Des at Langley? Sam Halpern could have had that game run on him, or could be shilling in his interview, as David Talbot accused him of in Brothers.

Could the liberal pragmatism* of the Kennedy brothers (in this case, the recognition that the world and the hemisphere were best served by multilateral decision) be sidelined by the thought of an anti-Castro plot, devised by whomever, succeeding, even at the brink of achieving detente? Would it have beaten Goldwater in '64? Bobby having been, after all, the previous campaign manager.

It is sad and confusing - and no less so to the historical persons involved as to us - that so many may have been counting on "an inspired act of God" (sic) emerging from the whirlwind of chaos sown - the alliances fostered, the monies spent. This is why the hunt to discredit as much post-assassination disinfo as possible is so important.

Thank you, Bill, for the research and article.

+++

*I have referred to the Kennedys' "liberal pragmatism" enough times that I should define my terms. I believe that the Kennedy brothers are unique and laudible precisely to the extent that they examined the destruction of WW II and observed the post-war world enough to sense that US hegemony in the western hemisphere and Eurasia would only lead to oppression here and destruction globally, even as the brothers were lead to acknowledge that the denial of civil rights and permission of an unfettered business, banking, and military-industrial community within the US could only lead to an American neo-fascism. I believe that their attitude was: "The times and the majority of people in the world demand change, increase, and peace; anyone who resists is a fool and a danger to the coming standards."

The trouble is, circumstances can sway the best of men - and these brothers might have been that - into expedients, compromise, fallibility, and the loss of control. JFK's horror at the Diem assassination, and Bobby's vulnerability to LBJ's charge (in Jack Anderson's column, after Bobby opposed him on Vietnam) that his anti-Castro plotting got his brother killed, seem to demonstrate this.

Edited October 2, 2009 by David Andrews

[J. Raymond Carroll]

Des Fitz is quoted as telling Halpern that it was RFK who was ratcheting up the anti-Castro plots, that “I ran into Bobby. I saw him at Middleburg. Here’s what we got to crank up for next month….”

Sounds like a lot of hearsay in the Evan Thomas article. Thomas did not speak to Des Fitzgerald, unless he held a seance, and his sources are people whose careers involved skill at telling lies.

[Bernice Moore]

BILL THANKS FOR THE ARTICLE..HERE ARE A FEW PHOTOS OF WEXFORD FROM MICHELLE MORRISSETTE THEY BELONG TO HER SHE PURCHASED THEM....THANKS MICH...BTW THEY ARE FROM HER ORIGINAL NOVEMBER DAYS LEADING UP TO THE NOV.ASSASSINATION..B

Edited October 3, 2009 by Bernice Moore

[William Kelly]

Thanks for your input David, I agree with your assessment.

And great pix Bernice.

Also, a tip of that hat to Tom Scully for filling me in on the fact that the Desmond Fitzgerald, son of the former Ambassador to Ireland, is still alive in Connecticut, so he can't be Desmond Fitz of the CIA.

Why am I not surprised there are two Desmond Fitzgeralds?

I can't wait to catch up with the Bill Kelly who keeps getting me in trouble.

I'd like to read an obit for the CIA's Desmond Fitzgerald, but I can't seem to find one on line.

BK

[Guest Tom Scully]

[William Kelly]

Thanks Tom,

But they don't tell us who his father and mother were, which was the problem with the other Des Fitz.

There were reports he was a cousin of the Kennedys, but I think he was just good friends, tennis partners with Bobby and others, and since the Kennedy's other half of the family were Fitzgeralds, they joked that he was related.

But then again, maybe they were cousins, as it was the Fitzgeralds who were from Wexford.

BK

[Bernice Moore]

Thanks Tom,

But they don't tell us who his father and mother were, which was the problem with the other Des Fitz.

There were reports he was a cousin of the Kennedys, but I think he was just good friends, tennis partners with Bobby and others, and since the Kennedy's other half of the family were Fitzgeralds, they joked that he was related.

But then again, maybe they were cousins, as it was the Fitzgeralds who were from Wexford.

BK

ONE OF JAME'S COMPS....B

[Guest Tom Scully]

Thanks Tom,

But they don't tell us who his father and mother were, which was the problem with the other Des Fitz.

There were reports he was a cousin of the Kennedys, but I think he was just good friends, tennis partners with Bobby and others, and since the Kennedy's other half of the family were Fitzgeralds, they joked that he was related.

But then again, maybe they were cousins, as it was the Fitzgeralds who were from Wexford.

BK

Bill,

The short, NY Times death announcement image I displayed at the top of my last post states that CIA's Desmond's parents were, "the late Harold and Eleanor Fitzgerald." William HG Fitzgerald's parents were William G. Fitzgerald and "the late Mr.s Mary Ellen....of Boston."

[William Kelly]

Thanks Tom,

But they don't tell us who his father and mother were, which was the problem with the other Des Fitz.

There were reports he was a cousin of the Kennedys, but I think he was just good friends, tennis partners with Bobby and others, and since the Kennedy's other half of the family were Fitzgeralds, they joked that he was related.

But then again, maybe they were cousins, as it was the Fitzgeralds who were from Wexford.

BK

Bill,

The short, NY Times death announcement image I displayed at the top of my last post states that CIA's Desmond's parents were, "the late Harold and Eleanor Fitzgerald." William HG Fitzgerald's parents were William G. Fitzgerald and "the late Mr.s Mary Ellen....of Boston."

Thanks Tom,

I breezed right past that. Now we can put together a family tree and see if the Fitzgeralds are related to each other and/or to the Kennedys.

Maybe all they had in common was playing tennis?

And thanks for the pix B.

BK

[William Kelly]

Des Fitz is quoted as telling Halpern that it was RFK who was ratcheting up the anti-Castro plots, that “I ran into Bobby. I saw him at Middleburg. Here’s what we got to crank up for next month….”

Sounds like a lot of hearsay in the Evan Thomas article. Thomas did not speak to Des Fitzgerald, unless he held a seance, and his sources are people whose careers involved skill at telling lies.

Point well taken.

Thomas also wrote The very best of men: four who dared: the early years of the CIA, with Desmond Fitzgerald being one of the four, and giving some interesting insight.

But he's really stretching it here - quoting Shackley quoting Fitzgerald quoting RFK, if I have that right.

And these three sources are questionable, since they all apparently have an axe to grind with RFK.

BK

Edited October 4, 2009 by William Kelly

[Guest Tom Scully]

Bill,

According to this, and this, William HG Fitzgerald was the son of William Joseph Fitzgerald and Mary Ellen Smith.

Another intriguing aspect of the life of William HG Fitzgerald and his choice for best man (Ernest L. Byfield Jt.) in his 1943 wedding to Annelise Petschek is her family background and the usual cast of characters who interacted with her father, Ernest, and his father and uncle, the brothers Ignaz and Julius. Ignaz died in 1934, and after that, Ernest and his brothers karl, Charles, and William represented their family's business interests:

http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=ern...n&scoring=a

MRS. IGNAZ PETSCHEK

- New York Times - Jan 4, 1951

3Mrs. Helene Petschek of 2 Kensington Road, , widow of Ignaz Petschek, ... Surviving are four sons, Ernest of White Plains, Charles and William of Scarsdale ...

http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=pet...s&scoring=a

Obituary 3 -- No Title

- New York Times - May 10, 1980

PETSCHEK-William on Mav 8 in Scarsdale, dear brother-in-law of Josefa and Janina, beloved uncle of Charles, Max, Thomas, Annelise FitzGerald, Thea .

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&sou...mp;oq=&aqi=

Charles Petschek Sr. died Dec. 18, 1959

In the quote boxes displayed below, is information supporting the observations that Knights of Malta/Roman Catholic William HG Fitzgerald, in 1943, married into the family of Ernest, aka Ernst Petschek, the son of Ignaz, who, with his brother Julius, at the beginning of the 20th century, began to amass one of the largest fortunes in Europe. This fortune was protected by Bush family and Harriman partners Averill Harriman, Samuel Pryor, George Walker, and Prescott Bush, incorporators of front shell companies designed to hide the Petschek family ownership of Silesian coal mine assets, and to facilitate Frederick Flick's "aryanization" of these mines when the time came, in the late 1930's.

It still remains to be discovered what the actual relationship was of Jewish Ernest Byfield Jr. and Fitzgerald....whether he was closer to Fitzgerald, or to Annelise Petschek and her father.

The Dulles brothers were also deeply immersed in advising and helping to hide the ownership of Petschek family coal assets. Hermann Abs and Frederick Flick were rewarded and protected by Annelise Fitzgerald's father, Ernest Petschek, in the aftermath of WWII, even though both worked for the Nazi regime in what seems to amount to stealing vast coal assets from the Petscheks. After the war, Ernest Petschek and his brothers had the upper hand in coercing Hermann Abs, and Flick into sincerely working to pursue claims for the return of Petschek assets taken by the Reich government and it's industrial co-operatives.

Whatever the involvement in spying on JFK's meetings and communications at the Byfield family's GLen Ora estate, and the former Byfield business partner, Patrick H. Hoy's involvement in either the assassination of JFK or of Oswald, on behalf of his later employer, Henry Crown, it is plain to see that Allen Dulles had a vested interest in avoiding any investigation of Crown, Hoy, or of Byfield Jr. that could focus WC attention on Byfield and his friend Fitzgerald and his inlaws, since they were Dulles's clients and business partners. It can not be underemphasized that Allen Dulles had the ability to steer the WC investigation, in his role as one of seven Warren Commissioners, and in the common interests he shared with Henry Crown's personal attorney, WC Asst. Counsel, Albert E. Jenner Jr.

It has been written in books that close JFK friend William Walton was also a friend of Glen Ora owner and Byfield Jr.'s mother, Gladys Tartiere; that Walton and Clark Clifford had to persuade her to lease Glen Ora to JFK. More than ever, I would like to know how Walton came to know Gladys Tartiere, because I suspect Walton steered the JFK family into renting Glen Ora, "site unseen", acting at the behest of Crown, Hoy, and Byfield Jr.

http://books.google.com/books?q=Trials+of+...nG=Search+Books

Trials of war criminals before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals under ...? - Page 448 http://www.mazal.org/archive/nmt/06/NMT06-T0448.htm

History - 1953

Title Trials of war criminals before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals under Control Council law no. 10, Nuremberg, October 1946-April, 1949, Volume 6

Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law No. 10, Nuremberg, October 1946-April, 1949, Germany (Territory under Allied occupation, 1945-1955 : U.S. Zone)

Publisher U.S. G.P.O., 1953

...influence of the companies is exercised partly through German holding companies;

in the case of the Julius P. group through Thueringer Kohle, and in the case

of the Ignaz P. group mainly through the Deutsche Kohlen GmbH

The shares of these holding companies are outside the country — not in Czechoslovakia.

In the case of Julius P. they are held by an English concern, the shares of which are largely in American hands.

In the case of Ignaz P. the property is divided, as far as we know, between

two foreign holding companies; a Swiss company in Glarus, called

"Helmond," and a Dutch company.

We understand that the shares of these two continental holding companies are

held partly in England and partly in America. In the case of Julius P. American and

English groups are known to hold shares, whether formally or de facto is not

known.

In any case, 2 years ago, when proceedings were started against the Jewish General Manager Pulvermann,

the British Ambassador intervened at the Ministry of Economics,

while other authoritative British circles tried to influence Dr. Schacht in

favor of Pulvermann. From the fact that matters are thus involved,

it must be expected that any measures taken against the Petschek brown coal

enterprises will not only bring a protest from the Czechoslovak Government,

but will also cause British and American circles to assert that their interests have been damaged

and to induce their governments to intervene. In my opinion it is only a political question depending on the over-

all foreign policy situation whether one should be bluffed by these considerations.

I would like to quote from my own experience to prove that the whole thing is bluff or camouflage

[bluff oder Tarnung] on the part of the P. enterprises— The

shares of the Kattowitzer AG and the Bismarckhuette in eastern Upper-Silesia

were — even before the separation in 1920 — transferred to a Dutch company by their German owners in agreement with the

Reich Bank and the economic authorities.

The Poles were not deceived, and have always regarded these plants as German property.

For this reason, in 1926, when Laurahuette was transferred from Czechoslovak to

German ownership, a Swiss company was used and — to camouflage the real owner still further — another Swiss company,

and in addition a large American company, were created. This American company, the Consolidated Silesian Steel Corporation,

was founded by Harriman, the American bankers who had enjoyed great prestige in Poland.

The German owners now deliberately withdrew entirely into the background, in

order to emphasize still further the American character of the enterprises.

Apart from the brothers Harriman, the supervisory board consisted of a number of directors

of large American banks, a Rockefeller, and other very prominent Americans....

http://www.georgewalkerbush.net/bush-nazilinkconfirmed.htm

Bush - Nazi Link Confirmed

by John Buchanan, The New Hampshire Gazette, October 10, 2003

....In November, Congress seized the Nazi interests in Silesian-American Corporation, which allegedly profited from slave labor at Auschwitz via a partnership with I.G. Farben, Hitler's third major industrial patron and partner in the infrastructure of the Third Reich.

The documents from the Archives also show that the Bushes and Harrimans shipped valuable U.S. assets, including gold, coal, steel and U.S. Treasury and war bonds, to their foreign clients overseas as Hitler geared up for his 1939 invasion of Poland, the event that sparked World War II...

http://books.google.com/books?id=iRqI37ouG...929&f=false

The history of foreign investment in the United States, 1914-1945 By Mira Wilkins

page 382

.....Also inthis category was the United Continental Corporation (UCC), New York, formed in 1929 as a holding company for the German properties of the Czech Julius Perschek group. It reflects the complexities of some of the foreign holdingd in the United States, particularly those involving 1930s refugees from fascism. UCC's first president was John Foster Dulles; its second, Dulles' close friend George Murnane. Sullivan & Cromwell, Dulles' law firm in the 1903's (as wekk as in the 1920's), acted in behalf of many European investors in the United States. In the 1930's Murnane frequently assisted the law firms' clients, including the Belgian, Solvay & Cie, and the German firm, Robert Bosch. He would aid the Czechs.

Murnane was once a partner in the American banking house Lee Higginson & Co., which he left after it's 1932 reorganization. Dulles introduced Murnane to Jean Monnet (who would later be the inspiration behind European unification). They established in 1935 a New York headquartered investment banking firm, Monnet Murnane & Co. Murnane, as president of the UCC, participated in negotiations between the Julius Petschek family (who were Jewish) and the Nazis who wanted them out of Germany. The Pestschek properties in Germany were lignite coal mines, which German industrialist Frederick Flick desired to acquire. At one poiint in the discussion (in January 1938), Murnane suggested that UCC's assets in Germany be swapped for I.G. Farben's chemical plants in the United States. Murnane pointed out that since he was a member of the board of Allied Chemical, he could facilitate the arrangements. Flick responded that "under no circumstances could there Reich government be expected to agree to such an exchange." Murnane insisted that two-thirds of the stock of UCC was owned by Americans, who were Aryans. In May, 1938, he sold the Petschek properties and got foreign exchange. ....

http://books.google.com/books?q=%22Dulles+...nG=Search+Books

A law unto itself: the untold story of the law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell‎ - Page 128

by Nancy Lisagor, Frank Lipsius - Law - 1988 - 360 pages

Dulles arranged for George Murnane to "buy" the mines to hide the Petscheks' ownership and then offer them to Schacht. But the Nazi economics minister asked Murnane, "Why should I buy them now when I can confiscate them later?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_MacGuire

Business Plot

....In 1934 retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler testified to the McCormack-Dickstein Congressional committee that a group of men had approached him as part of a plot to overthrow Roosevelt in a coup.[1] In the opinion of the committee these allegations were credible. One of the purported plotters, Gerald MacGuire, vehemently denied any such plot. In their report, the Congressional committee stated that it was able to confirm Butler's statements other than the proposal from MacGuire which it considered more or less confirmed by MacGuire's European reports. [2] However, no prosecutions or further investigations followed.

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/McCormack-Di...ald_C._Macguire

Will you give your name?

Mr. MACGUIRE. Gerald C. MacGuire.

The CHAIRMAN. I will say that counsel is allowed to be present as a matter of courtesy. Counsel is at liberty, if counsel thinks that the constitutional rights of his client are involved, to advise him as to what he thinks the proper course is to take.

Mr. MARKS. I am quite sure that no such question will arise.

Mr. MacGuire. Mr. Chairman, may I say something, please?

Mr. MARKS. May I suggest that you allow the chairman to ask questions, and I think we will get along much better.

The CHAIRMAN. Your place of business is where?

Mr. MacGuire. Grayson M.-P. Murphy & Co., 52 Broadway, New York City.

The Chairman. What is your connection with the company? Mr. MacGuire. I am a bond salesman......

Milestones, Apr. 1, 1935 - TIME

Gerald Charles MacGuire, 38, bond salesman (Grayson MP Murphy & Co. ... 3); of uremia and pneumonia; in New Haven, Conn. His brother, William J. MacGuire, ...

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/...,748700,00.html

http://wwwarc.eui.eu/idchn/pdf/INT515.pdf

JOHN DAVID DRUMMOND EARL OF PERTH

Interviews witb F Duch6ne 21 April. 23 May and 4 JUly 1989

L Interview of 21 April 1989

page 1 of 79

rape 1 Side 1

DP My father, having been appointed the first Secretary-General of the League of Nations, had as his number two, Jean Monnet, who was appointed, I think, by the French and British agreeing that it was he who would be the right person. I can remember very well my father talking about Monnet in I suppose it was 1919, certainly it was 20, I think it was 1919. I probably met him then.

FD You were a boy of about twelve or thirteen then? DP I was twelve. I went out to Geneva, always, in the holidays, when my family moved to Geneva, and for the first several years, Jean Monnet was working there. I saw him occasionally. I don't remember whether I saw him very much, but obviously, I must have not only liked him, but he registered, in every sense of the word. Then he leaves. I remember my family was rather sad about it. We all liked Jean very much. He leaves to do his brandy business. Then he's working over in America, and he doesn't appear on the scene again, as far as I am concerned, until -I suppose -1931 or 32. I must have in some way or another known what he was up to. Then I heard that he was going to go to China on a government mission.

FD Which government? DP The Chinese government, which had invited him. Two or three years before that, from 1929 until 32 or 33, I had been with an American stockbroking merchant firm, called G M P Murphy and Company. After the first year in New York, I was over working as their representative, with my cousin,who was the head of the thing,for GMP Murphy, England. 1 did that for a year or two, and found it was not very thrilling work. I heard that Jean

page 2 of 79

was going to China. I remember well writing him a letter saying: "Will you let me come?"

FD Your father had had nothing to do with this?

DP No, no. I may have said to him: ''I'm going to do it". But this was entirely my own initiative. And t got back, to my great pleasure, "Well, if you're

really serious, I would like nothing better". It was a longer letter than that. I was really serious, and I told Gerald Maxwell, who was a first cousin of mine,

and the head of Murphy's over here, that I was leaving. So off I set. We had a good deal of preliminary time arranging things, before we actually went

out. We used the Hyde Park Hotel as our headquarters. Jean always used the Hyde Park Hotel as his headquarters. We were preparing the ground. Then

the moment arrived of going out. Three of us went out, Arthur Salter, having been invited also by the Chinese government, Jean and myself. I'm trying to

remember whether we went to America and then on. I suppose we must have done. We may have gone our different ways to get there, but I do

remember clearly that we did finally arrive in a ship on the West Coast, and sailed from there to China.....

page 3 of 79

.....DP Then. to carryon, Monnet Murnane and Company was well after our Chinese venture had started.

FD But it is during this period that the idea -or more than the idea, the institution -of the China Development Finance Corporation is born and brought into effect?

OP Yes. It was before Monnet Murnane and Company. It was definitely a sequel to the purpose of our visit. Jean was asked to recommend how in a practical way China could be helped for its economic reconstruction to stand on its own feet. and so forth.

FD So it's not purely a business proposition?

OP WeU, not purely a business proposition, but you can't in fact isolate one from the other. Arthur Salter wrote a report, which had nothing to do with business. It was just a report on the economics of China, and what should be done. We were creating something. We had a lot of thought and there was a lot of intrigue to get the CDFC set up. You had to persuade aU the Chinese banks who. in a sense. were very often rivals. You had r.v. Soong in particular -although Kung was the nominal. and perhaps the real. minister of Finance -T V stiU played an active part. Having knocked him down. the family gathered him together again and let him go on playing.

FD He was a very powerfUl personality in his own right, was he not?

DP Certainly. Very powerfUl. In his way, much brighter than H.H. Kung. R.H. Kung was a nice, well-meaning man but his wife, who was a Soong sister, was much more powerful. FD She was the third of t.he trio? OP The third, yes....

page 4 of 79

...DP.....We made our report. I don't know if I can find it in my files, but it was a good report. The sequel to that was that they finally decided, Jardine Matheson, to take our advice, which was to build a new ship, so that the shipping company went on. Then they had a stroke of luck. When trouble arose with Japanese pressure on China, there was a Chinese line -a steamship company also -and they were able to take it over, because they were in a strong position at that time, and suddenly, instead of having two or three or four ships, they had ten or twelve and flourished. The foundation of that success depended on the earlier report that we made. I don't know whether it's in the files or not, I hope it is, but I'll have a look. It's a report I've been searching for for ages, and tried, and tried, and had no success in finding it. Then Jean goes away. My suspicion, my memory, is that he left a little bit early, because of potential marriage with Silvia.

FD Do you know much about that?

DP I know that he wanted to do it for quite a long time. I think he used Sullivan and Cromwell, and therefore Foster Dulles, as an adviser on how to achieve this. It sounds a strange person to ask. F

D Did Bu11itt have any part?

DP It could be, it could be.

FD Because they married in the Kremlin'

page 5 of 79

DP That sounds exactly right (laughs)! I'm sure that Rajchman came into it! Everybody was called in to try and find the right way. Jean wanted to complicate it enormously, because in those days divorce wasn't something which was done.

FD If I may. I'll come back to that. because you obviously know a great deal about it!

DP Well, I don't know loo much, The rea! point of it is that Jean left early, to deal with this question, and I stayed a little bit longer.

FD That took quite a time? I mean, we're talking of months?

DP Yes. I came back my own way. I'm rather hazy. I'd have to look up and try and find the dates. My trouble is that I get muddled between my first visit to China, and my second visit to China. The second visit to China was to make effective certain activities of the Chinese Development Finance Corporation. and Jean wasn't with me that time, but Monnet Murnane and Company had been formed. Anyway, I went back to London, and I must have had some connection in the sense of an understanding that I continue with Jean. It may be that before I was back, the idea of Monnet Murnane and Company had developed. George Murnane· I've said this, I'll now put it for the record -George Murnane had been with Lee Higginsons. Lee Higginsons got into trouble with Kreuger and Toll, and everybody felt sorry for him, if that's the right word, because they all knew that it. was none of his fault that Lee Higginson had got into trouble. There was a loyalty there amongst people, whether it was in America or City circles. You didn't blame people who weren't to blame. He had very good contacts, Lee Higginson being Boston-based. and one of the great merchant banks before the trOUble.

FD He himself had a very good reputation, George Murnane?

DP Yes, very good. Liked by everybody. You couldn't help liking him. He had a wonderful sense of humour, and had some very good contacts. For him and Jean to join forces was in every sense an ideal combination. They both had very good contacts, both were highly respected. and one had a particular strength in Lee Higginsons in Europe, whereas the other had more really in America. Jean Monnet curiously was, I would say, stronger really in America than Murnane was. George Murnane had been very instrumental in all the work on Kreuger and Toll, and Buropean affairs.

FD But you're saying that the Giannini episode -the Transamerica episode hadn't really undermined Monnel's personal reputation?

DP No.

FD That's interesting. Why not? Doesn't it argue some naivete, as well as bad luck?

page 6 of 79

DP No, I think it represented a battle between the Eastern banks, and the Western banks. The Pacific coast.

FD And the Western banks won.

DP The Western banks won.

FD He was ground jn the middle, as it were?

DP Yes. FD And the Bastern banks thought, well, that's his bad luck, but he's still one of us.

DP Yes, absolutely. As I say, I think the name of the man who reaHy was backing there was Elisha Walker. FD Yes. Of Blair?

DP Blair, that's right. But I'm sure that people didn't hold it against Monnet. Anyhow. China was a nice come-back.. And then you form Monnet Murnane. which we can talk about later. Qearly, I had a constant relationship with Jean. This doesn't mean that we were always in the same part of the world. We weren't. He usually worked in America, and I'd be working over here, or I'd be in Europe and George Murnane would come over.

FD That's clear from youre archives, isn't it? And then you went to Hong Kong.

DP And then I went back again. And then we came up against 38,39. 1938, I could go into in great detail. but I'm not going to at this stage. Then just before the outbreak of war. I remember seeing Jean over here. and saying to him: "Look, I am going into the Intelligence", because I'd been enlisted for it. He looked rather startled. Startled isn't quite the word, perhaps surprised. Looking back I think perhaps I made a mistake, in being ready to go into the Intelligence, rather than saying to Jean: "I want to stay with you". Because then 1 would have got into the Combined Boards. I don't know. I went my way for sil: months, and he went his, with all the troubles that we know.

FD But this also means you didn't know fully what he was doing at that time?

DP That is right. I didn't know fUlly what he was doing, because he was working on the equivalent of the Combined Boards, and I wasn't. I would see him, if I was over here, or he might see me. But there was a good deal of being apart. Then, I think in June of 40 (it may have been JUly) I was sent over to America for a fortnight, and that's when I think I saw him, and discussed various problems of how to get arms for this country, with France having failed. 1 will tell you in more detail the extraordinary lists. and so forth, which came out. I worked from there on, first of all with ... the UOC -I....

page 13 of 79

DP That's right. It was the start of a new life. When I then found not only that I had that, but also a great Quantity of other papers, about not only the China episodes, but Monnet Murnane and Company, I came to the conclusion that this was something that gave an insight into what Monnet was up to, in a period where nobody else really knows virtually anything of what he was up to. His archives got burnt, or whatever, and I felt that this was of first importance, that the records should be there. And I had the good fortune of coming to a meeting when you were there, and button-holed you ...

FD Well, the good fortune is minel

DP WeH, both ours. J think you've got to remember, in going through these flles, that this is a group of highly qualified business people. Monnet was in those days a business man rather than a politician of any kind. George Murnane was very highly regarded. He had been with Lee Higginson, which was one of the outstanding American private banking groups, from Boston. They got into trouble with Kreuger and Toll, and so he was out in the wilderness through no fault of his own. He and Monnet joined forces, after Monnet came back from China, the first time, and set up the cope, and formed Monnet Murnane and Company. Therefore, when you go through these archives, you will see, again and again, just a story of a particular business deal which may or may not have come off. It looks to me, having glanced through them very quickly, that very often they didn't come off. You'll see there the story of trying to develope the telephone business in China .. it wasn't very profitable, a sort of a continuing relationship. You had a lot of people who wanted to horn in on the act. You'll see other similar elamples, whether it was railways, or chemical companies, or what you will. So you must look at these things thinking that here is an operating business, which was trying to make money for the individuals, Who weren't very well off, and not as a sort of long-term aim of ...

FD Building Europe, or something.

DP No. Totally different.

FD As to the archives themselves, there are several documents in your dossiers which talk, for instance, about the balance sheet of the company. At the same time, I don't remember having seen anything that refers to any operation, or returns, on the scale of the one you've just been talking about Un conversation before the recording -PO), the Petschek operation. From which I take it that there are gaps in the dossiers here? Have you any sense

page 14 of 79

of what you would have covered, and not have covered, in your archives? and of how much of your archives remain here?

DP What I've noticed from one of them was that half a dozen of the files there was a note, and I've got to try to find it again -which said "Files 3,4,5 and 6", or whatever it was, "sent to Monnet in Paris", I'll try to look that up. I don't know what exactly they were, It was always a struggle to live. The Petschek deal was probably as big as any that we ever handled. Perhaps I'm going to be very indiscreet here. It's a long story, but a very interesting story, After the war, the British government came to me, and they said: "Look, we'd like you to give evidence at the Nuremberg trials", and I said: "Why?" And they said: "Well, because one of the criminals is a man called Flick", who was the richest man in Germany. When he was taken prisoner, he had two letters on him, and only two letters, and one was a long hand letter from I don't know who, and the other was a letter from me, signed Strathallan, saying: "Dear Gottfried Fliclc, I want to say thank you for your having carried out your undertakings in the way you have, and I hope we have an opportunity to do business together again". Now, this was in relation to the Petschek business. I said: "Well, you'U get no comfort from me on the story of this, because he behaved totally honorably", and indeed, he did miracles in the way of getting dollars for the owners. They, after the war, had said "Oh well, we hadn't got enough money". I mean. although they'd accepted the deal, there was a certain duress. But otherwise they wouldn't have got anything. So it was a very good price. Now what I was going to say which is indiscreet, is that when all this was coming along, I went and saw Jean, and I said to Jean: "Look, what can you remember of this business, and do you want in any way to get involved?" And he quite simply said: "I don't know what you're talking about". It's the only time I've been a little bit .., surprised. Whether it's because the word Nuremberg, and all that side, was unnattractive, J don't know, but anyhow, it was the only time I've ever been -disappointed. It may be that he didn't remember. But after all, it was a very big business. Well, the sequel to it all was a happy one, in so far as I was concerned, because I gave my affidavit, and Flick was exonerated on this one part of the charge. They got him for certain other things, but only for a period of time. The extraordinary part of that story -it has nothing to do with Jean Monnet, but it is an extraordinary story -was that when he was taken prisoner this was the only thing he had on him. He must have treasured this letter, when he saw how things were going wrong. Here was a frlend -oh, he'd got a title. therefore he must be important! Extraordinary, I digress.

page 15 of 79

FD That is very interesting. Because it shows that he knew the way the wind was blowing. He must have kept it for a long time.

DP 38, I think it was. And he'd carefully put it into his filing, and when he knew what was going to happen to him, he had it on him.

FD You don't know what the other letter was?

DP No, I didn't get to know. But it must be in the record, there must be somebody who knows it, because the Foreign Office apprehended it.

FD Now these files, presumably, are the creme de la creme? You sifted your files?

DP No.

FD If you took all your files over four or five years, you'd obviously have much more than that?

DP Well, one's secretary would throw a lot of them away, so it's not a continuous record.

FD Most of the documents seem significant.

DP Well, that's what I think happened. I had a secretary who wasn't too much of a squirrel. Sometimes you have every single letter or thought, sometimes you don't. I have in no way, so far as I'm aware, sorted them out. They were just what I found.

FD There are how many files? A dozen? Yes? So there'd be about S0' as much, in bulk, would have been taken away by Monnet?

DP I suppose.

FD But as you remember the circumstances, and the qualities of your secretary, you would reckon that those, plUS the ones Monnet took away, were probably the significant ones?

DP I think so.

FD The only thing that surprises me is that something like the Petschek business isn't in it. If one looks at the structure of Monnet Murnane, you were handling things primarily from the London end, plus anywhere in the world Which would seem to be a place to which London had special access?

DP I think that's probably true. For example, I became involved in the Petschek thing entirely through George Murnane. George Murnane had very good contacts in Germany. He was highly regarded from the time of the Kreuger and Toll liquidation and other problems like that. He knew the people -he knew Schacht and so on. It was a natural for him. He couldn't be in Europe all the time. So he comes over to Europe, I go with him, and we have a preliminary canter, together, meeting these people, and then he goes off, and I go back and have further contacts, really getting down to the negociations. George Murnane would be at the end of a ship, or a telegram,

page 16 of 79

perhaps, and in touch with the Petscheks, who had all moved off en bloc to the United States. You're quite right to say there's no file about it.

FD Is that significant of something broader? That each one of you is doing his own thing to some degree, and perhaps George Murnane a little more than the others. The business George Murnane generated would not necessarily appear in full flower in your files?

DP That is right. There were certainly things which were going on in America, which I would know nothing about. Anything that was in relation to Europe, and probably to China, I would know about. It was convenient from the organisational point of view, that the "& Coy", which is Pierre Denis in Paris, and myself in London, should be very fUlly in the picture. But undoubtedly there were activities of Monnel's, and of George Murnane's, that I knew nothing about.

FD You mentioned in the last interview, that in some ways, contrary to what one might imagine, Murnane was stronger in Europe than you would think likely of the American partner, whereas Monnet was, curiously, probably stronger than Murnane in America, even though he was the European partner. If that's so, it's possible -or is it possible, rather? -that your files might be particularly blank on that part of Monnel's actiVity which was concentrated on the United States?

DP Undoubtedly. That is why 1was distressed to find that there were no files in America. Murnane, so far as I know, has died, his wife has died, and I haven't been able to locate them. You see, Jean had always very powerful American contacts, from the time that he left the brandy business, having reconstituted it. lie went out to America, and got involved in banking, and I'm pretty ignorant about what it was, but it lasted quite a long time -Blair and Company, I think, was part of it. I can remember that he had an option on Chase Bank shares. And he took up his options, let's say at 100, and borrowed to enable him to do it. In those days, they were probably selling at

500. Then, after the great crash of 29, they suddenly went down to 20 -I don't know my figures exactly. So he was very heavily involved and was really ...

FD Bankrupt?

DP Well, if not bankrupt, very heaVily involved. He had the Monnet brandy business behind him, I suppose, but he was in serious financial difficulty. At the same time, I do know a little bit about what was happening in 32, 33. l'here was a struggle between the Eastern banks and Giannini, who was in control of Transamerica, which was a Pacific thing. The Eastern banks wanted to get hold of it all, and have a development on the Western side. I

page 17 of 79

think Elisha Walker was some figure in it all. Jean was very much involved, and really, I think, put in charge of trying to achieve this, and run Transamerica -I think Transamerica was the holding company for the Bank of America. They had a shareholders' proly fight, and Giannini won. I think it was only after that, that Monnet was at a loose end. Hence, China was an opportunity. FD Do you know why Blair and Company was very much involved in this? Why should it have been the spearhead of this fight?

DP I'm not sure that Blair was the leader. I only know that he had some associations there. I don't know that they were taking an active part. Jean was really in America from the mid-twenties, until 32 -and then had come to China for a period -doing I don't know what. I do know the one activity I've mentioned.

FD Yes, but you do have the impression that before China he found himself in great financial difficulties, and further, that he was bailed out by Lazards?

DP That's right.

FD Obviously that's an impression you have for quite strong reasons?

DP Certainly. What you must remember is that the head of Lazards in those days was Sir Robert Kindersley, later Lord tindersley, and Bob Brand, later Lord Brand. The two of them were very close friends of Monnet's from the first war. They all knew each other working on the combined Anglo-French things. There was complete trust and friendship there. Undoubtedly, in the six years we're talking about, he had probably kept on his contact at Lazards, and at that time the London Lazards was, I suspect, as powerful as either the French or the New York part. They knew Monnet, and trusted him totally. There was a friendship and a regard for him. Which meant that, I think, they bailed him out. Why I think that is that he always used to say to me: "You must pay particular attention to cultivating the two of them" -which was no difficulty for me. because they were natural friends. and very nice, fine people -and that he at some time or another said something like: "lowe a great debt to them". Not necessarily meaning money, but meaning 'they've stood by me, they've helped me'. One knew there was more to it than that, but it was none of my business to probe that.

FD He did say to me, on several occasions, that in contrast to the United States, the great quality of the City was to stand by you when you were in trouble, if you were well thought of.

DP That's absolutely true. All of that, 1think, is changing now. But in the days when I was in the banking world, whether it was in the 30s, or up to the 50s -because I went back for a short time to Schroders -you back a

page 18 of 79

person. You judge them on their character. You weren't judging a business. You judged a person. If you liked the person, and respected him, then you would stand by him. And if he got into difficulties, then you would still stand by him, because you would know that he was trying to do the right thing, and he was worth while. I think on the other hand in America they were always -we want this security. and that. you haven't go it. it's no good. It didn't matter that you were ...

FD That's a deep social difference, isn't it? Between a society where you assume that you can get to know people, and in America you assume basically that the society is so mobile you can't really get to know them, they're here today gone tomorrow.

DP I don't want to over-elaggerate the differences, because I think now we've gone much more along the same road.

FD Since the Big Bang. certainly.

DP Even before, there were a lot of signs of it all. You see, Jean had a very real following, or support, and he had friendships, particularly with people like Foster Dulles, and Allen Dulles, and so on and so forth. They were the ones who helped him on his marriage. Foster was working on it all. I got to know Foster earlier, but I think what I'm trying to say is that he had very good contacts -whether it was government, whether it was lawyers. People like Foster.

FD And which were much more than casual?

DP Oh, much more. And he's always had that gift, as you know, of knowing the right person for the right purpose. They might not be important at all. Or they might be very important.

FD By the way, he would know them!

DP He'd know them and he would follow them. When he wanted to, he could provide you with all sorts of ...

FD Ancient ties.

DP Ancient, yes.

FD You mentioned before that the heavy insurance Monnet carried posed some problems, and you linked it in some way with Lazards baling him out?

DP It's my guess -it's no more than a guess -that what he had done as a financial arrangement with Lazards, was to have a very heavy insurance on his life. So that if he died, they would pick up the money coming from his life insurance.

FD And tbis had a practical effect on his capacity to go to China?

DP That's right. But it was a perfectly natura! thing to do, for both sides. I suspect what happened was that they said: "Look. we'd like an insurance

page 19 of 79

policy of" -let's say a million pounds, I don't know what the figure was, I've got no judgement of whether it was a hundred thousand, for that matter. "We'll pay the premiums. Why? Because we have an interest in you" -I mean, the debt. Now this is ... surmise. It's not ~ surmise. It's always somewhere in the back of one's mind, various things that were said. Well, one knew that there was a very real ... but he naturally was very reticent. I would be too....

page 55 of 79

...And when the war breaks out, primarily interest in preserving foreign assets, so that they don't get treated as Axis assets, and stripped in some form or other, so that when the war ends, they've lost them. This would mean that quite a lot of your business was actually related to problems like this?

DP I don't think very mUCh. The Solvay thing was rather an exception. There was a very close understanding between us, and Rene Doel came over with the Belgian government, and so was able to complete the thing while he was over here, and do the necessary.

FD BOE:H was in London during the war, was he? DP Yes. It was much more that these companies wanted to operate, do a business, whatever, like get a telephone concession, build a railway, and we were very useful people because we knew, or could know, the governments, or the banks, concerned. It was very much living by connections and wits.

FD And in terms of financial living, not an enormous living?

DP Certainly not. It could have so developed, but with the war breaking out, it all collapsed.

FD Though for instance, Murnane was still, in 1941, when of course Monnet Murnane was essentially Murnane, it was still earning S11 0,000, I think it was.

DP That doesn't surprise me. You see, he had a very close relationship with Lazards. No doubt, they were using him quite a lot. He later joined Lazards,

page 56 of 79

as you know. lie was the one person who could stand up to Andre Meyer, and Andre Mayer both liked him and was a little afraid of him.

FD Really? DP Yes, in a way.

FD I thought Andre Meyer terrorised everyone?

DP Well, George was the one person who could stand up to him. I knew Andre pretty well too. Then there were people like Tommy Brand, at Lazards. This was an old-boy network which was pretty important. As you say, by 1941, Monnet was out, he wasn't active in it, and George Murnane getting whatever it was, S100,000 or so, from various fees for various purposes, in no way surprises me.

FD That would have been quite good, wouldn't it? In 1941?

DP Well. it shows how much they had built up, in the way of fees of one kind or another.

FD And you were out, by that time?

DP I was out. FD What were the other sources of income then? If Solvay was rather exceptional, if Chinese activities were a bit of a damper, and the rest wasn't primarily with Germany and Italy, where would the bulk of the profits and fees come from?

DP I think: the bulk came from the countries you've mentioned, but one was trying to find odd bits and pieces of business which would help. I frankly don't know exactly what miKht have been the activities either of Monnet or of George Murnane. I'm pretty sure there were a certain number of retainers paid, for one reason or another, because they were people who stood for an awful Jot, had the highest of reputations, ability, if you wanted to call on them ...

FD To produce results? DP Yes.

FD Perhaps these networks are the most interesting thing to look at, then. I've noticed quite often, in the papers I've seen, that Dulles's name comes up. He comes up very often as the source of the activity -not only source of funds at the beginning of Monnet Murnane, but also I think in the Petschek relationship, it was originally Dulles who put the Potscheks in touch with George Murnane.

DP I think that's extremely possible.

FD So it suggests that Sullivan and Cromwell, and Dulles in particular. and Monnet Murnane, were part of this network -short of being actual partners. they were all but.

page 57 of 79

DP I think that sounds perfectly possible. I didn't know, until you told me today, that Foster had put up some of his own personal money, but then if you've done that, you naturally would channel things to them. When, as a lawyer, someone approached you, and said: '1 want help', you said: '1 know the very people, the best people you can go to' -and they were right, on Monnet Murnane and Companyl And so the thing builds on itself.

FD This would have been Murnane more than Monnet, in this case? It was MUl'nane who had the entrees in Germany, much more than Monnet?

OP I don't think Jean had any real entries there at all, that 1 can recall. No, I don't think so. In France. Obviously, like George, a lot of strength in America. Jean had great strengths in Britain.

FD Lazards. DP Lazards. And yours truly would help. And I had pretty wide contacts, or very wide contacts. Then Pierre Denis was the main fellow who kept France in the circuit.....

http://books.google.com/books?id=2Mnuzj_AB...205&f=false

The Deutsche Bank and the Nazi economic war against the Jews: the ... By Harold James -

pages 99- 100

.....Personal Contacts of Deutsche Bank's Managing Board: Hermann Josef Abs

In some of the most important and problematic cases of "aryanization," the involvement of Deutsche Bank occurred in a very personal

basis, which blurred lines between personal and business relations, and depending on trust or confidence in particular executives. Two of the most interesting examples again involve Hermann Josef Abs. The first is Deutche Bank's involvement with the German portion of the Petschek concern, a vast empire od coal (primarily lignite) fields controlled (since the death of the founder, Ignaz Petschek, in 1934) by four German-Czech brothers, Ernst, Wilhelm, Karl, and Frank Petschek. The Petscheks' most important property in Germany lay in upper Silesia and was administered by a trust company, the Deutsche Kohlenhandel GmbH. The family resisted attempts to "aryanize" itts assets with the utmost vigor, Karl Petschek apparently told German officials in a meeting at the Reich Economics Ministry: "If it's war you want, gentlemen, I am ready." Hermann Goring appointed a senior official, Helmuth Wohlthat, as a special commissary (Sonderbeaufragter) with the task of "aryanizing" the works.....

....and above all, the Flick group approached the trustee. A Flick manage, Otto Steinbrinck, explained in late 1937 that "expansion of its coal base was a question of survival, which is why it wanted at all costs to pariticipate in the liquidation of the Petschek holdings. The lignite fields were eventually sold mostly to Flick as part of an exchange of property in which Flick wouid sell hard coal resources to the Reichswerks "Hermann Goring" (RHG).

But there was also a much smaller Petschek field in western Germany. In this case, there appears to have been no rush of interested companies. Of the ordinary shares of the Petschek-owned Hubertus AG, 73.6 percent were owned by Helmont AG Glarus and Deutsche Industrie AG, which formed part of an extensive industrial empire of the Czech part of the Petschek dynasty. Minority participations included 16.2 percent held by the Abs family of Bonn: Justizrat Josef Abs, and his sons Clemens Abs and Hermann J. Abs (who in 1938 had joined the managing board of Deutsche Bank: he had been on the supervisory board of Hubertus since 1925.) Abs senior had been associated with the company since its founding in 1905.

At the beginning of 1938, Ernst Petschek talked with Hermann Abs about "aryanization trends." Abs noted simply: "D.B. position." In June, 1938, Ernst and Wilhelm Petschek resigned from the supervisory board of Hubertus AG, and Josef Abs became chairman. The "aryanization" started with an accusation from the tax authorities....that Hubertus AG had organized a flight of RM 70 million.....

page 102

...How much did the Petschek family know about the Abs family plans? Hermann Abs went to Switzerland shortly before the outbreak of the war and on September 19, 1939,

spoke with Ernst Petschek, the oldest of the brothers, in Zurich. But there is no reliable account of what was said. In any case, the Petscheks saw no reason why they should send their share titles to Germany.

....There is no doubt that throughout the sale (of Hurburtus A.G.), and especially in the restitution process, the Petscheks had confidence in the character and trustworthiness of Abs, their former junior partner, and that Abs assisted after 1945 in the restoration of their position. The postwat story was not a matter simply of goodwill: Abs was legally obliged to cooperate in the process of restitution. He also saw a series of opportunities in restitution.

After the war, Ernst Petschek began a correspondence with the wartime manager of the Erft AG, Hans Kersting. In his initial letter, he explained:

"My brother and I also remain in good health and have meanwhile become American citizens. As you are probably aware, at the time the liquidation of Hubertus was undertaken against the wishes of the majority shares represented by Dr. Hanggi....and myself. Those shares remain in our possession...."

Hermann Abs, who obtained Petschek's address from Kersting, wrote a rather vague account of the wartime transactions:

"...The liquidation of Hubertus was pushed through by the then government against the will of the management and all the partners..."

The relaiionship between Abs and the Petscheks soon became warm and trusting, and Ernst Petschek sent Abs CARE packages as a goodwill gesture: Abs replied with a copy of an article on restitution law. In December, 1948, Abs and his brother Clemens Abs resuscitated the Hubertus AG, and in Ferbruary, 1949 three Petschek brother, Ernst, Charles, and Wilhelm sighed, in Westchester County, New York, a power of attorney to Abs in regard to the management of their Hubertus share. It might be thought that Abs's position was somewhat perculiar, in that he now represented the Petscheks, as well as his own interests. But the financial settlement, by which the Abs family bought the restitution claims of the Petscheks (and thus secured legal possession of the Hubertus AG shares), was laid down by a court. In 1955, the Abs family sold its shares in Erft AG to the lignite consortium Verges.

Abs continued to work closely with the Petscheks. He had helped them obtain a restitution settlement agains the state holding company Viag in 1953 and 1954, and in 1956 he received a general power of attorney in restitution negotiations, now chiefly against the West German state in regard to the much more extensive Petschek properties that had been taken into the Reichswerke "Hermann Goring" (now renamed Salzgitter). In May 1963, the Berlin Restitution Chamber concluded a settlement of the claims of the Petscheks heirs against the Salzgitter. In 1970, the same court awarded the Petscheks DM 9,500,000 in settlement of their RM 105.965,000 in Reichs treasury certificates.

....Abs reported to Charles Petschek that he had spoken to with Dr. Weimar of Salzgitter about the need for additional security: "What is to happen if with the reunification of the Federal and the Democratic Republics the brown-coal companies are to compensated in respect of confiscated assets?....In short, a new Germany-- or the end of the Cold War--would bring a new set of legal problems and issure in relation to indemnification for the German past.

In return, William Petschek also helped Abs in the Stuttgart case against GFR historian Eberhard Czichon by providing a sworn statement that the Hubertus manager, Edwald Droop, who in 1939 had tried to block the Abs family plans, was not representing the interests of the Petscheks. There was thus no evidence that the Abs had in any way negelected the Petscheks' interest in 1939 or subsequently, even though he had barely consulted the family in devising his reorganization of Hubertus.

Postwar restitution history does not provide any evidence that the Petschek family mistrusted Abs. On the contraty, Abs helped them to obtain large settlements in the cases that were important, and more difficult, than that of the Hubertus company. (It is striking that the restitution claims against the German state were much harder to negotiate than claims against German companies or individuals.) But that history does show the peculiar, multifaceted character of Abs's activities, in which he continued to play several--not always coinciding--positions....

Edited October 5, 2009 by Tom Scully

[Linda Minor]

Tom, have you seen the article I wrote in 2005 that concerned George Murnane's relationship with the Forbes family--ancestors of both Ruth Forbes Paine Young (Ruth Hyde Paine's mother-in-law) and John Kerry? Also discussed is Grayson Mallet-Prevost Murphy

http://www.sandersresearch.com/index.php?o...7&Itemid=62

[Robert Howard]

Tom, have you seen the article I wrote in 2005 that concerned George Murnane's relationship with the Forbes family--ancestors of both Ruth Forbes Paine Young (Ruth Hyde Paine's mother-in-law) and John Kerry? Also discussed is Grayson Mallet-Prevost Murphy

http://www.sandersresearch.com/index.php?o...7&Itemid=62

JFK Researcher Martin Shackleford wrote a very important article in The 3rd Decade Vol 3 # 5

entitled Notes On The Knights of Malta; the link is below.

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...amp;relPageId=4

Note, it is extremely short, but does provide an interesting list of persons who Shackleford lists as members, some very interesting names.......

Edited October 6, 2009 by Robert Howard

[William Kelly]

I think it’s important to step back for a second and look at how these things are connected to Dealey Plaza.

For starters, we know that in dealing with JFK, those involved with General Dynamics were doing everything at their disposal, including blackmail, to get the F-111 contract, and we know who these guys are – Fred Korth, Roswell Gilpatrick, John Connally, Robert MacNamara, et al. That’s at the control and command level.

At the street level, we know how General Dynamics are connected to Oswald – via Max Clark, who worked in security at the Convair Division of General Dynamics;

And we know how they are connected to the Cubans and Project Paperclip through the Electric Boat Division in Groton, Conn., developing a new, high speed, shallow water skift for the anti-Castro Cubans operations, and in developing Atlas rocket as ICBM.

When Desmond Fitzpatrick said that he just got back from Middleburg with the new covert plans for Cuba, they involved the Maritime Operations, as Evan Thomas notes when he quotes Shackley, the head of JMWAVE, and wrote, “During the summer and early fall, five commando raids were launched against Castro's economic infrastructure, in the hopes of "destabilizing" the regime. The raids were costly: Twenty-five CIA agents, Cuban exiles recruited as commandos, were killed or captured. Though it was doubtful that the commandos would bring down Castro by knocking down some telephone poles or by petty acts of sabotage (the negligible Cuban underground was instructed to leave faucets running and light bulbs burning to waste energy), FitzGerald was determined to keep trying.”

We also know how (the former FBI agent and director of security at General Dynamics) I.G. Hale’s twin sons Bobby and Billy Hale broke into Judith Campbell Exner’s apartment, an operation that was observed by FBI agents on stakeout, has never been explained. It has, via, Sy Hersh, been associated with the blackmail attempt to get the F-111 contract for General Dynamics, but also could have been connected to the plots to kill Castro, even though the Mafia CIA plots were no longer a consideration in 1963 and the DOD – Army-CIA plots were taking shape. .

William Walton

Tom Scully wrote: “It has been written in books that close JFK friend William Walton was also a friend of Glen Ora owner and Byfield Jr.'s mother, Gladys Tartiere; that Walton and Clark Clifford had to persuade her to lease Glen Ora to JFK. More than ever, I would like to know how Walton came to know Gladys Tartiere, because I suspect Walton steered the JFK family into renting Glen Ora, "site unseen", acting at the behest of Crown, Hoy, and Byfield Jr.”

Tom, I don’t know that Walton was acting at the behsest of Crown, Hoy and Byfield, Jr.

Nor do I know if they bugged Glen Ora or knew what was discussed there other than what Des Fitz told Shackley, Halpern, et al.

But it is a good question - How DID Walton come to know gladys Tartiere?

We know, from David Talbot, how Walton knew the Kennedys and what he had so say, and also how Evan Thomas, the guy who started all this, tried to falsely spin it:

From: David Talbot’s Brothers – The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years, (Free Press, 2007, p.19)

…On Sunday afternoon, at 12:21 Eastern time, the second shock from Dallas struck the nation – Lee Harvey Oswald was gunned down on live television as he was being escorted through the basement of the Dallas police building….the brazen elimination of first the president and then his accused assassin sent a deep shudder through Washington circles. One the phone with Bill Walton, Agnes Meyer, the aging, blunt-spoken mother of Washington Post publisher Katherine Graham, groled, “What is this – some kind of goddam banana republic?...”

(p.25) …After sending Sheridan to Dallas, Bobby dispatched another trusted Kennedy family intimate, Bill Walton, to Moscow, one week after the assassination. Walton carried with him a secret message for the Soviet government from Bobby and Jackie. It was the most astounding mission undertaken at the request of the Kennedy family in those astounding days after the death of JFK.

William Walton was the ideal man to play the role of confidential courier. There was no one the Kennedys trusted more. If Bobby had his loyal band of brothers, JFK attracted the devotion of his own circle of male friends. And none of these men enjoyed a more easy compatibility with the president than Walton, whom JFK fondly called ‘Billy Boy.’”

“ …..I was always surprised that he thought I was as close a friend as he did,’ Walton recalled years later. ‘He kept drawing me into things. I was even in his bedroom in the White House. I never expected to be there. Finally we were totally intimate. I think he was deeply fond of me. I was of him. I haven’t had many male friends as close as he became finally.”

“I was not subservient to him in the way you see so many people. My position was independent. And to tell you the truth, [when we first met], he thought I was a lot more famous than he was.”

Walton met Kennedy in the late 1940s in Georgetown, where the young unwed congressman was living with his sister, Eunice, and Walton was turning the second floor of his Victorian-style home into a studio, after leaving journalism to try his hand at painting. Walton, a former Time magazine war correspondent who won the Bronze Star after parachuting into Normandy with General James Gavin’s 82nd Airborne Division, had known JFK’s late brother and sister, Joe and Kick, in London. He flew one mission with Joe’s naval aviation outfit about a month before the eldest Kennedy brother died on a treacherous bombing run. Eight years older than JFK, Walton must have conjured memories of his heroic older brother in Jack.

But if Walton had the resume of a man’s man, he was equally at ease in the company of women, with whom his relationship tended to be ‘sweet and safe and jolly,’ in the words of one such female companion, Martha Gellhorn, the distinguished war reporter and ex-wife of Ernest Hemingway. Walton also enjoyed a ‘sweet and safe’ friendship with Jackie Kennedy.

He met her in Washington before she was married, when she was “just a wonderful-looking, kooky, young” inquiring photographer for the now-defunct Times-Herald. He immediately was drawn to her “fey, elfin quality” and her curiosity about books and art. She liked his bohemian style, with his fondness for wearing tight blue jeans and work shirts before it became a popular look, and his love of gossip. Walton was twenty years older than the wide-eyed gamine, but he had a wonderful, boyish spirt and crooked grin that brought to Gellhorn’s mind “a clever and funny Holloween pumpkin.” Like other women, Jackie was also surely drawn to Walton’s valiant effort at single fatherhood, raising son Matthew and daughter Frances by himself, after he divorced his mentally unstable wife.

After the Kennedy moved into the White House, the first couple made Walton a frequent sidekick, finally giving him an official role in 1963 as the chairman of the Fine Arts Commission, where he and Jackie joined hands to save Washington’s historic blocks from the wrecking balls of philistine developers. She sent him flirtatious notes on White House stationary, including a collage featuring a photo of Walton with the inevitable cigarette in hand and the inscription, “Hate cigarettes – but I imply can’t resist those Marlboro men! Will you be my Valentine?”

He was in a “unique position,” Walton later noted, because he was equally close to both Jack and Jackie. They each confided their secrets to him and they used him to communicate with each other. “I figured out later that I was a real link for both of them. You can well imagine how tough that period is in anybody’s life….it is in the eye of the hurricane.” Walton – witty, worldly, dishy – helped ground them both. They could act around him as if they were still the young, carefree couple they had been back at Georgetown…..

(p.32) …..Now, in Moscow, Bobby Kennedy’s representative was reporting that the attorney general’s worst fears had come true. What Walton told Bolshakov over their meal at the Sovietskayha stunned the Russian. He said that Bobby and Jackie believed that the president had been killed by a large political conspiracy. “Perhaps there was only one assassin, but he did not act alone,” Walton said, continuing the message from the Kennedys. There were others behind Lee Harvey Oswald’s gun. J. Edgar Hover had told both Bobby and Jackie that Oswald was a Communist agent. But despite the alleged assassin’s well-publicized defection to the Soviet Union and his attention-grabbing stunts on behalf of Fidel Castro, the Kennedys made it clear that hey did not believe he was acting on foreign orders. They were convinced that JFK was the victim of U.S. opponents. And, Walton told Bolshakov, “Dallas was the ideal location for such a crime.”

(p.33)

The remarkable meeting between Walton and Bolshakov was first recounted in One Hell of a Gamble, a widely praised 1997 book about the Cuban Missile Crisis by Timothy Naftali, a Yale scholar at the time and now director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library, and Aleksandr Fursenko, chairman of the history department of the Russian Accadmy of Sciences. ….

Newsweek’s Evan Thomas, a dean of Washington journalism, did zero in on the book’s account of the Moscow mission in his 2000 biography of Robert Kennedy, wagging his finger at Kennedy for his “irresponsible and potentially mischievous act of backdoor diplomacy.” But Thomas completely ignored the most provocative part of the Kennedy communication – his views on the assassination – and focused solely on Bobby’s anti-Johnson sentiments and political ambitions. Bobby’s astonishing secret message to Moscow, one of the most revealing glimpses we have from those days of his thinking about the assassination, would disappear down the media hole as soon as it was made public.

Convair / General Dynamics:

http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Ae...vair/Aero36.htm

Convair had been formed in 1943 from the merger of Consolidated Aircraft and Vultee Aircraft corporations. It formally became a division of General Dynamics in April 1954, with plants in San Diego and Pomona, California, and in Fort Worth, Texas, following a stock purchase of the year before by John Jay Hopkins, president and chief operating officer of General Dynamics. The Convair division would operate over the next half century primarily as an independent company under the General Dynamics corporate umbrella.

General Dynamics had been formed in 1952 from the Electric Boat Company. In the two years before it acquired Convair, General Dynamics' sole aircraft manufacturing unit had been Canadair, a Canadian company. But because U.S. law prevented American aerospace contracts from being fulfilled outside the United States, General Dynamics had not been involved in the U.S. aerospace market. With the acquisition of Convair, General Dynamics could now bid on U.S. aerospace contracts, perhaps the greatest benefit of the acquisition.

Convair's first large undertaking as part of General Dynamics was the Model 880 jetliner. In the mid-1950s, the jetliner age was fast approaching and Convair lagged behind. Boeing and Douglas companies had cornered the long-range jet market, but Convair believed that the medium-range jetliner market was yet untapped. After meeting with Howard Hughes of Trans World Airlines, Convair set out to build a medium-range jetliner to meet TWA's needs. The final design was the Model 880.

The 880 was racked with problems from the start, as much to do with Hughes' meddling as anything else, and turned out to be only a few feet shorter than the Douglas DC-8, lumbering along with four large engines. Despite the plane's shortcomings, Hughes ordered 30 in June 1956. Hughes also got Convair to sign a one-year exclusive contract that effectively prohibited sales of the Model 880 to other companies even though, at the time, Hughes did not have the money to pay for the planes. This contract allowed Boeing to launch the very successful 720, which United Airlines ordered, essentially killing the 880. Finally, in December 1960, after Hughes obtained financing to pay for the 880s, the planes were delivered to TWA.

Convair also developed a bigger, more advanced version of the 880, the 990. American Airlines ordered the 990, but because it fell a few miles-per-hour short of the speed requirement, American canceled the entire order. Eventually, American relented and ordered 15 planes.

In all, only 102 Model 880/990 airplanes were ordered, and Convair's losses from the series totaled $425 million. It turned out to be the largest loss by a company up to that time in United States history, surpassing the loss by Ford on the Edsel. The 880/990 series came to be known as "The Flying Edsel."

In 1951, the Air Material Command of the U.S. Air Force awarded Convair Project MX-1593, a contract to develop an intercontinental military rocket, later known as an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). Convair engineer Karl Bossart named the project "Project Atlas" and Convair began to develop America's first ICBM. However, the project was not well funded and progressed slowly.

In 1953, the Soviets exploded a thermonuclear device and were supposedly working on ICBMs to carry uranium and hydrogen warheads. In reaction to this, in March 1954, the Western Development Division, a special missile command agency created by the Air Research and Development Command, awarded Convair its first long-term contract for engineering and fabrication of an ICBM.

For the Atlas, Convair developed a new kind of airframe, nicknamed the "gas bag." Made of stainless steel sections that were thinner than paper, it achieved rigidity through helium pressurization, similar to the way a football keeps its shape. The powerplant, contracted to the Rocketdyne Division of North American Aviation, was a three-engine design with Rocketdyne responsible for the two booster engines and Convair responsible for the sustainer engine. Together, the engines produced more than 360,000 pounds (1.6 kilonewtons) of thrust, equivalent to about five times the power generated by the Hoover Dam. In comparison with other missiles of its time, Thor, Redstone, and Titan, Atlas was a rather fat rocket, ranging from 16 feet (five meters) in diameter at the base to 10 feet (three meters) at its fuel tank. With its original nose cone, it stood nearly 76 feet (23 meters) tall.

The first configuration of the Atlas, series A, was used solely for research and development, but the B series was much closer to operational specifications. On December 18, 1958, the Atlas 10-B successfully delivered the Project SCORE payload, the world's first communications satellite, into orbit, becoming the first Atlas rocket to be used as a space launch vehicle. The subsequent Atlas D, E, and F series rockets were designed to be used by the Strategic Air Command as ICBMs with a nuclear payload. The final qualification flight test of the Atlas D, called "Big Joe," took place on September 9, 1959.

On July 29, 1960, the Atlas-Mercury One (MA-1) launched, but the rocket exploded roughly one minute after launch. On February 21, 1961, using a strengthened Atlas rocket, MA-2 was successfully launched and recovered. A few more tests followed. Finally, on February 20, 1962, aboard Atlas rocket-poweredFriendship 7 (MA-6), the first American astronaut, John Glenn, lifted into orbital flight.

In 1957, General Dynamics/Astronautics Corporation, which had broken off from and then rejoined the Convair Division, submitted a proposal to the Air Force to develop the Centaur, a new space launch vehicle that could lift heavy payloads into orbit. This vehicle was a high-energy second-stage rocket with a new liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen propulsion system that could boost payloads as great as 8,500 pounds (3,856 kilograms) into orbit.

On May 8, 1962, the first Centaur, developed by the Air Force and assembled at the Convair plant in San Diego, was launched but exploded 54 seconds after takeoff. NASA's Lewis Research Center (later the John H. Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field) was assigned the task of correcting the rocket's problems and, on November 23, 1963, the first successful launch of the Atlas first stage, Centaur second stage (Atlas/Centaur) rocket took place.

For the next 30 years, the Atlas/Centaur rocket would be the U.S. workhorse in space. In May 1966,Surveyor 1, the first soft lander on the Moon, was launched aboard an Atlas/Centaur rocket and throughout the 1970s, the Atlas/Centaur rocket was used for launching probes and fly-by's to other planets, including the Pioneer 10, which flew to Jupiter. Also planned for use with Space Shuttle-launched payloads, NASA scrapped that use after the 1986 Challenger accident due to increased safety concerns.

Meanwhile, while Convair was developing the Atlas and assembling the Centaur, it was also developing new fighter jets and bombers. The YF-102A, the first plane using the new "area-rule" fuselage, first flew in December 1954, and went into production in 1956 as the F-102A Delta Dagger. The more advanced F-106 Delta Dart (originally the F-102B) followed and first flew on December 26, 1956. It was capable of initiating a "zoom climb," arching up 70,000 feet (21,336 meters) in the thin upper atmosphere to attack hostile bombers. Its air-to-air missiles were controlled by a digital computer that guided the interceptor to its target using information from ground equipment until the target was in radar range of the plane, when the plane's radar would take over. It was produced until 1961.

In 1952, Convair received a contract to develop a supersonic bomber to succeed the Boeing B-47. The XB-58 Hustler exploited Convair's delta-wing expertise, used four GE J79 engines, and carried all weaponry in a jettisonable streamlined pod beneath the fuselage. Most significantly, under the new comprehensive "weapon system" policy, Convair was responsible for the performance of all systems, including electronics, weaponry, and subcontracted components.

The XB-58 first flew in November 1956, and entered production at Fort Worth in 1960, becoming the first supersonic bomber. However, only 116 were ordered due to strategic reassessments and questions about the aircraft's performance. In 1965, General Dynamics decided to build all future planes at its Fort Worth location, ending Convair Division's production of complete airplanes.

The Convair Division continued, however, to be involved with space and delivered the first Space Shuttle Orbiter mid-section fuselage to North American Rockwell, producer of the Orbiter, in 1975. Convair also developed and eventually produced the Tomahawk

http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Ae...vair/Aero36.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Dynamics

Management churn

Hopkins fell seriously ill during 1957, and was eventually replaced by Frank Pace later that year.[3] Meanwhile, John Naish succeeded Joseph McNarney as president of Convair. Henry Crown became the company's largest shareholder, and merged his Material Service Corporation with GD in 1959.

Naish left in May 1961, taking most of Convair's top people with him. GD subsequently reorganized into Eastern Group in New York and Western Group in San Diego, California, with the latter taking over all of the aerospace activities and dropping the Convair brand name from its aircraft in the process.[citation needed]

Frank Pace retired under pressure in 1962 and Roger Lewis, former Secretary of the Army and Pan American Airways CEO was brought in as the new CEO