A Paine on the "Right" Side

[Duke Lane]

Elsewhere on this forum, under the "Curtain Rods" thread, Mark Carter posited that Michael and Ruth Paine were "high ranking members of the Communist Party" and that Ruth "framed" Lee Oswald by concocting an elaborate ruse involving the supposed bundle of curtain rods:

... My opinion is that the curtain rod story was a "frame job" created by Ruth Paine her best friend Randle and her younger brother Frazier!!! The curtain rods were supposed to be the rifle that Oswald used to shoot the President with. Michael and Ruth Paine were high ranking members of the Communist Party. So what I am asking here is why are there no connections between the Communist Party and the assassination ever mentioned in any of the books and documentaries about the assassination. In my new book I have uncovered hundreds of links between the JFK assassination and the Communist Party.

Some members met this pronouncement with incredulity, myself included. Greg Parker went a step farther to note that not only were the Paines not "high ranking members of the Communist Party," but moreover Ruth's estranged husband Michael leaned to the opposite extreme:

Michael Paine gave the game away on his own politics when he spouted JBS propaganda as fact before the commission. Apart from that, there's nary a tittle of evidence to suggest either were pro-Communist -- let alone high ranking members of the CPUSA.

This intrigued me, and lacking specifics (or a response to my query as to what "propaganda," exactly, Paine had espoused), I decided to read the testimony in whole to see what this was referring to. While I haven't had time to read through all of Paine's 80 pages of testimony (in three appearances), this is from his first:

Mr. Liebeler

. Are you a member or have you ever attended any meetings of the John Birch Society?

Mr. Paine

. I am not a member. I have been to one or, I guess chiefly one meeting of theirs. ...

Mr. Liebeler

. Would you tell us the circumstances of your attendance at that meeting and what happened?

Mr. Paine

.

I had been seeking to go to a Birch meeting for some time

, and then I was invited on this night [the night Stevenson spoke in Dallas,

op cit

] so I went. It was an introductory meeting. ...

Mr. Liebeler

. For the record I think the record should indicate that Mr. Stevenson was in Dallas on or about October 24, 1963. Who invited you to this meeting?

Mr. Paine

. I had tried once before to go to a meeting which didn't occur. There happens to be a member of our choir, a paid soloist who is a John Birch advocate so

I have been applying — so I have been telling her, that I wanted to go

. I suppose, I don't remember for certain but I suppose she was the one who told me where and when. ...

Mr. Liebeler

. May I ask, did you go out of curiosity rather than sympathy or rather how did you happen to go?

Mr. Paine

. I am not in sympathy. —

Mr. Dulles

. So I gathered.

Mr. Paine

. — I have

been to a number of rightist meetings and seminars in Texas

. I was interested in seeing more communication between the right and the left;

there isn't much liberal out there and so I wanted to be able to speak their language and know that their fears — and be familiar with their feelings and attitudes

. (

2H287-89

)

While there is a lot more to Paine's testimony than the handful of pages I've read so far, the picture that emerges thus far is that Michael was - or wished to portray himself as - a "student of political philosophies" who was "interested in seeing more communication between the right and the left," and who absorbed himself with the more "radical" elements of either side as if to be able to somehow facilitate that dialog.

His father, George Lyman Paine, according to the son, was himself apparently really a "high level" left-winger who took young Michael - at Michael's "considerable insistence" - to meetings of the various CPUSA factions in New York. Nobody, he said, attempted to recruit him to the cause, but they "were glad to meet Lyman's son." One might conjecture that nobody would have felt the need to "recruit" an "heir apparent" ... and if anyone was to have to "recruit" young Paine, it would be the elder who would do so.

According to some sources from the above Google link, the senior Paine was "was a founding member of the Johnson-Forest Tendency of the Socialist Workers Party" on the one hand, while on the other reportedly "went undercover as [a] communist" in partnership with one James Burnham (who himself reputedly "went on to teach the newly formed CIA about covert operations [and] to teach philosophy at Yale and recruit CIA agents from among his students") and "infiltrated the leadership of the American Trotskyist movement -- the world's largest Trotskyist organization — and helped tear it apart."

Michael, at age 34 in front of the Warren Commission, said that he had "very little specific knowledge about what [his father] does." Even as a youngster, he "had [his] own dreams of how [he] would like to see society at the time and it wasn't along-the same line" as the Trotskyists he was introduced to by his well-thought-of father. He did, however, at one point became a "member" of the ACLU - an organization decidedly not right-wing - but his support of the organization and its ideals were tepid at best: he supposed "you become a member as soon as you contribute money, and I may have contributed money a good many years back," but "I didn't start going to a meeting of the organization until I was — I have only been to about four perhaps, in Dallas, four meetings" (2H387).

Not exactly what you'd call an "activist" by any stretch of the imagination, hardly a devout follower, and really not much of a "member" at all when you get right down to it.

ACLU ... JBS ... CPUSA ... what exactly was Michael anyway, if he could be classified at all? Despite the appearance of frugalilty - not to necessarily say "poverty" - while his wife lived in a tiny Irving bungalow, and which he himself claimed as home in March 1964 (he lived in an apartment in Dallas during the year prior that he and Ruth were separated), Michael was a design engineer at Bell Helicopter in nearby Fort Worth (he said it was "difficult to say" if he had a security clearance for his job), not generally a meager profession, and especially in the times of and leading to Vietnam.

His profession aside, Michael Paine did not come from poor stock. According to a page on which Michael and Ruth are referred to as "a tiny footnote in history," Michael Paine was of a lineage that has more recently culminated with former Democratic Presidential candidate and Senator from Massachusetts John Forbes Kerry (another "JFK" from Massachusetts - how ironic!), but which also included the former president of Alexander Graham Bell's telephone company, the CEO of the shipping empire of William Russell (founder of Yale's Skull and Bones Society), a shipping captain who "played a prominent role in the outbreak of the Chinese Opium War," a railroad tycoon, and a wealthy US Governor General of the Phillipines (ref: Wikipedia, "The Forbes Family of China and Boston").

Michael's mother, the former Ruth Forbes, was the Governor General's niece. The elder Ruth was an artist and a great-grandaughter of the man who owned Walden Pond and who employed the writer Henry David Thoreau who made it famous, Ralph Waldo Emerson. She was also reputed to be a long-time friend of Mary Bancroft, Allen Dulles' wartime lover and his chief contact with one of the leaders of the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, according to JFK researcher Richard Bartholomew.

After being divorced from Lyman, Michael's mother married her third husband in 1948, philosopher and inventor Arthur Middleton Young, who has been called "the greatest theoretical genius since Einstein," and whose most prominent and lasting invention was the Bell helicopter. I think it's fair to say that it wasn't at any country "folk dance" that Michael's mother met "A.Y."

Thus, even while Young was no longer directly associated with Bell after 1953, it would nevertheless seem that Michael may not have been such an "ordinary" engineer after all, and that the good folks at Bell Textron were as happy to meet "the stepson of A.Y." as the Trotskyists were to meet "the son of Lyman." It is difficult to imagine that he was paid at a level to only be able to afford for his wife, a kindergarten teacher from whom he was estranged since September 1963, a mere thousand-square-foot tract home.

That home is valued at under $100,000 today, meaning that in the early '60s, the Paines probably bought it for well under $5000. Surely an engineer with a pedigree such as Michael's, working as a "favored" employee (as a step-son to the inventor of Bell's raison d'etre) and - supposedly, but also likely - with trust funds of his own supporting him probably could have much done better if he'd wanted to.

(For those ultra-conspiracists among us, it should be noted that an anagram of "Arthur M. Young" is "naughty rumor" ... which we all recognize as being those things that the Warren Commission sought hardest to quash, even while the rest of official Washington sought only to edify the man's creation!)

What is interesting to me is that Michael Paine's testimony seemed to hold its share of self-corrections, which one might almost preface with an "oops!" For example:

There happens to be a member of our choir, a paid soloist who is a John Birch advocate so I have been applying — [

oops!

] so I have been telling her,

that I wanted to go

.

... and later:

[T]here isn't much liberal out there [around Dallas] and so I wanted to be able to speak their language and know that their fears — [

oops!

] and

be familiar with their feelings and attitudes

"Oops," he didn't mean to say he'd been applying to become a Bircher, he merely "wanted to go" to a meeting out of mere curiosity, and "Oops," he wasn't trying to assimilate/ingratiate himself into the ACLU by learning to "speak their language," but merely wanted to "be familiar with their feelings and attitudes." One can only wonder where the comment about their "fears" was headed before he'd caught himself!

If I'm remembering correctly - I haven't finished reading his testimony yet - one of the four ACLU meetings he'd attended in Dallas is one that he went to in the company of Lee Oswald and (again, if memory serves) at his behest, not Oswald's.

While dad Lyman appeared to be one of the "higher-ups" in a Trotskyite movement, the claims of his having "infiltrated" and "tore apart" that would suggest that he was not necessarily what he appeared to be. As I recall from one of more of the "Lyman" Google links, he was also considered in the '50s to assist the CIA in some fashion, but the idea was rejected for unspecified reasons. He did, however, do something for the Company in the '60s. If that and his association with a man reputed to have trained CIA operatives are true, it would stand to reason that his "Communist" leanings were a mere facade.

Thus, even if Communism was, in fact, "a generational trend passed on to their children," it doesn't appear to be one that was necessarily "passed on" to young Michael ... if indeed such a "trend" existed in the first place (like bleached blond hair being a "dominant gene," eh?). Indeed, based on their lineage, it would seem that Messers Paine would more likely gravitate toward the conservative - that is "right" - spectrum than the liberal. Even if Lyman were a dyed-in-the-wool Trotskyite (a far cry from Marxist-Leninism), young Michael wouldn't be the first progeny to reject, even rebel against the politics of his forebear.

Bell Helicopter also doesn't seem like the kind of place to harbor Commies either, especially in its design engineering departments, security clearance or not. ("Now, Michael, remember to promise that you won't give these plans to anyone with a funny accent, okay?")

Even if Michael and Ruth were "card-carrying" Commies, about all that that might prove is that they were FBI informants since without FBI "infiltrators'" dues, chances are that there'd be no "Communist Party" in the USA! I don't have the reference at hand, but it strikes me that there were literally hundreds around the country who were true "threats" compared with many hundreds more who wore a badge when they weren't at a "party" meeting!

Without delving too far into how "convenient" it would be to have the "patsy" and his Soviet wife in the care and custody of a pair of right-wingers cum "liberals," it makes entirely much more sense - as perhaps betrayed by Michael Paine's words about "applying" to the JBS and his purported espousal of their "propaganda" as "fact before the Commission" - that the Paines were much more comfortable than they portrayed during that time period, and that they were much more likely conservatives than "high-ranking members" of the left-wing Communist Party.

[John Dolva]

interesting and detailed. Can't add much of substance except to the speculative portion. While things do pass on in generations, often it is the opposites to some extent that is passed on. ie. a conservative father may in a questioning son produce a mind open to the more radical and vice versa. 'Don't do it' is a good way to get kids to do it.

Right about the FBI large contributions to the coffers of the CPUSA. Cointelpro was the domestic FBI op. In a way what Michael is describing is the activities of an info gatherer or perhaps an FBI informant. At age and responsibility level he is at he is probably already set in his basic ideas, and wanted (if not an informant(of which there were many and few of them wore badges.(Ronald Reagan was one for example, and a supporter of JBS)) to compare and orient himself in relation to other views.

One other thing to consider is the vast production of flase hoods by the FBI in order to splinter the left. So some of this may very well be the opposite oif the truth and info generated by the COINTELPRO. Not suggesting that any is, I haven't seen the documents( and even if I did...?)., just that it must be born in mind that some may be.

[Robert Howard]

Reading Duke Lane's insightful comments about the Paine's reminds me of the failure of the A.R.R.B. to produce them during the hearing period, like Carol Hewett, I read the 1964 Redbook expose featuring Ruth Paine.

The most disturbing incongruity, in Hewett's view, had to do with Ruth's reaction to Oswald's murder. "We have this pious Quaker who, when interviewed by a journalist for Redbook magazine in the summer of 1964, told this journalist that she was glad that Ruby shot Oswald. She was glad that Oswald was dead --- these are exact quotes. And this journalist was just appalled that this very religious woman would say such a thing. Because even if Oswald had done the murder, this was a man who was deprived of his civil liberties, was not given the opportunity to have a trial or be defended by counsel. And there was this widow, and two little girls that Ruth was supposed to be attached to, and there was no offer of condolence. Ruth did not go to Oswald's funeral. Even Jackie Kennedy had the good graces to offer condolences to Marina Oswald."

Ruth told the Redbook journalist that she was glad Oswald was dead because it spared Marina the trauma of a trial. Noting the obvious parallel to Ruby's alleged statements about sparing Jackie Kennedy, Hewett wondered, "Do we have the same scriptwriter here?"

http://www.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_i...ssue/paine.html

Now it is a matter of record that Ruth withheld a portion of her taxes ostensibly as a protest against U.S. policies in Central America circa 1982

see

http://www.sptimes.com/2004/04/15/Floridia...ar__a_few.shtml

yeech, what a phony, the woman is a walking cover story.

A Poor attempt at humor?

'Who or What was Ruth Paine?'

Edited May 1, 2006 by Robert Howard

[Thomas H. Purvis]

'Who or What was Ruth Paine?'

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Last time that I checked, she was the daughter of Insurance Executive William Avery Hyde of New York.

http://www.ajweberman.com/nodules/nodule9.htm

WILLIAM AVERY HYDE

"From 1939 to 1941 I was the District Sales Manager of Greater New York for the Farm Bureau Insurance Companies of Ohio (now Nationwide). No one could get an agent's contract from the companies in my district except through me."

"Apparently the Comrades were anxious to infiltrate the outfit because a continuous stream applied for contracts. The fact that we had no specifically Communist type trouble from any agent I appointed leads me to think that my screening was successful."

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/jfkinfo4/jfk12/hscademo.htm

GEORGE DE MOHRENSCHILDT

Staff Report of the

Select Committee on Assassinations

U.S. House of Representatives

Ninety-fifth Congress Second Session

March 1979

1939-41-Dabbled in insurance business but failed to pass broker's examination

During the interview with the committee investigator, Dryer was asked if he were familiar with the names of a number of people who may have had some connection or association with George de Mohrenschildt. Of the names, Dryer recognized Dorothe Matlack and William Avery Hyde.(198) He remembered Matlack as one of the people Charles asked Dryer to contact for him in the United States.(199) Dryer could not remember in what connection or context Hyde's name had been used by de Mohrenschildt.(200)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://jfkassassination.net/russ/testimony/demohr_g.htm

Testimony Of George S. De Mohrenschildt

Mr. JENNER. Excuse me, sir. Before we get there because that skips some things--one of your efforts was as an insurance salesman?

Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes; that is right.

Mr. JENNER. And----

Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. How did you know that?

Mr. JENNER. You were unsuccessful in that, were you?

Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. Very unsuccessful.

Mr. JENNER. As a matter of fact, you didn't sell a single policy?

Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. Not a single policy.

Mr. JENNER. Over what period of a time did you pursue that activity?

Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. I even didn't pass my broker's examination. I tried to get an insurance broker's license. I studied to be an insurance broker in the State of New York. And I failed dismally that examination. So that was the end of my insurance business.

Mr. JENNER. All right. When you left the Louisiana oil fields, what did you do?

Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. Went back to New York, recovered from my amoebic dysentery. And I don't remember whether it is then that I tried insurance or not. It is possible then that I was trying to work at this insurance broker's deal.

Mr. JENNER. That is right; 1941.

Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes.

Mr. JENNER. And you are in New York City.

Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. I am in New York City

Did you once describe your work in the insurance business as the lousiest, stinkingest, sorriest type of business possible?

Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Inquiring Minds" have long wanted to know/find the association of George DeMohrenschildt and the Michel/Ruth Paine (Hyde) family.

Unfortunately, too many have expended their time with the "NATIONAL INQUIRER" in searching for these connections, as opposed to searching out the facts.

Be assured that others were fully aware of this connection and specifically avoided it just as they avoided DeMohrenschildt's connections to others of importance.

As in the William Avery Hyde case/family, one most assuredly does not want to make the direct tie between George DeMohrenschildt and a CIA "family".

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Guest John Gillespie]

Bell Helicopter also doesn't seem like the kind of place to harbor Commies either, especially in its design engineering departments, security clearance or not. ("Now, Michael, remember to promise that you won't give these plans to anyone with a funny accent, okay?")

Even if Michael and Ruth were "card-carrying" Commies, about all that that might prove is that they were FBI informants since without FBI "infiltrators'" dues, chances are that there'd be no "Communist Party" in the USA! I don't have the reference at hand, but it strikes me that there were literally hundreds around the country who were true "threats" compared with many hundreds more who wore a badge when they weren't at a "party" meeting!

Without delving too far into how "convenient" it would be to have the "patsy" and his Soviet wife in the care and custody of a pair of right-wingers cum "liberals," it makes entirely much more sense - as perhaps betrayed by Michael Paine's words about "applying" to the JBS and his purported espousal of their "propaganda" as "fact before the Commission" - that the Paines were much more comfortable than they portrayed during that time period, and that they were much more likely conservatives than "high-ranking members" of the left-wing Communist Party.

_____________________________________________

Very nice work, Duke. Thank you. My take has been, is and always will be that the elites, globalists, One-Worlders - or however one wants to ID them - care nothing about Right, Left or Center and that they delight in monitoring our Left/Right paradigm, especially the culture war (which is precisely the 'doctrine' of the Birch Society and nothing more, the relentless frontal propaganda notwithstanding).

The bloodlines to which you referred speak directly to this. The Paines were awash in CIA, the KGB of the Globalists. They were dripping in deceit and DeMohrenschildt.

Does it matter by what sentiment or alliance we expose this?

Regards,

JAG

Edited May 1, 2006 by John Gillespie

[Greg Parker]

Elsewhere on this forum, under the "Curtain Rods" thread, Mark Carter posited that Michael and Ruth Paine were "high ranking members of the Communist Party" and that Ruth "framed" Lee Oswald by concocting an elaborate ruse involving the supposed bundle of curtain rods:

... My opinion is that the curtain rod story was a "frame job" created by Ruth Paine her best friend Randle and her younger brother Frazier!!! The curtain rods were supposed to be the rifle that Oswald used to shoot the President with. Michael and Ruth Paine were high ranking members of the Communist Party. So what I am asking here is why are there no connections between the Communist Party and the assassination ever mentioned in any of the books and documentaries about the assassination. In my new book I have uncovered hundreds of links between the JFK assassination and the Communist Party.

Some members met this pronouncement with incredulity, myself included. Greg Parker went a step farther to note that not only were the Paines not "high ranking members of the Communist Party," but moreover Ruth's estranged husband Michael leaned to the opposite extreme:

Michael Paine gave the game away on his own politics when he spouted JBS propaganda as fact before the commission. Apart from that, there's nary a tittle of evidence to suggest either were pro-Communist -- let alone high ranking members of the CPUSA.

This intrigued me, and lacking specifics (or a response to my query as to what "propaganda," exactly, Paine had espoused), I decided to read the testimony in whole to see what this was referring to. While I haven't had time to read through all of Paine's 80 pages of testimony (in three appearances), this is from his first:

Mr. Liebeler

. Are you a member or have you ever attended any meetings of the John Birch Society?

Mr. Paine

. I am not a member. I have been to one or, I guess chiefly one meeting of theirs. ...

Mr. Liebeler

. Would you tell us the circumstances of your attendance at that meeting and what happened?

Mr. Paine

.

I had been seeking to go to a Birch meeting for some time

, and then I was invited on this night [the night Stevenson spoke in Dallas,

op cit

] so I went. It was an introductory meeting. ...

Mr. Liebeler

. For the record I think the record should indicate that Mr. Stevenson was in Dallas on or about October 24, 1963. Who invited you to this meeting?

Mr. Paine

. I had tried once before to go to a meeting which didn't occur. There happens to be a member of our choir, a paid soloist who is a John Birch advocate so

I have been applying — so I have been telling her, that I wanted to go

. I suppose, I don't remember for certain but I suppose she was the one who told me where and when. ...

Mr. Liebeler

. May I ask, did you go out of curiosity rather than sympathy or rather how did you happen to go?

Mr. Paine

. I am not in sympathy. —

Mr. Dulles

. So I gathered.

Mr. Paine

. — I have

been to a number of rightist meetings and seminars in Texas

. I was interested in seeing more communication between the right and the left;

there isn't much liberal out there and so I wanted to be able to speak their language and know that their fears — and be familiar with their feelings and attitudes

. (

2H287-89

)

While there is a lot more to Paine's testimony than the handful of pages I've read so far, the picture that emerges thus far is that Michael was - or wished to portray himself as - a "student of political philosophies" who was "interested in seeing more communication between the right and the left," and who absorbed himself with the more "radical" elements of either side as if to be able to somehow facilitate that dialog.

His father, George Lyman Paine, according to the son, was himself apparently really a "high level" left-winger who took young Michael - at Michael's "considerable insistence" - to meetings of the various CPUSA factions in New York. Nobody, he said, attempted to recruit him to the cause, but they "were glad to meet Lyman's son." One might conjecture that nobody would have felt the need to "recruit" an "heir apparent" ... and if anyone was to have to "recruit" young Paine, it would be the elder who would do so.

According to some sources from the above Google link, the senior Paine was "was a founding member of the Johnson-Forest Tendency of the Socialist Workers Party" on the one hand, while on the other reportedly "went undercover as [a] communist" in partnership with one James Burnham (who himself reputedly "went on to teach the newly formed CIA about covert operations [and] to teach philosophy at Yale and recruit CIA agents from among his students") and "infiltrated the leadership of the American Trotskyist movement -- the world's largest Trotskyist organization — and helped tear it apart."

Michael, at age 34 in front of the Warren Commission, said that he had "very little specific knowledge about what [his father] does." Even as a youngster, he "had [his] own dreams of how [he] would like to see society at the time and it wasn't along-the same line" as the Trotskyists he was introduced to by his well-thought-of father. He did, however, at one point became a "member" of the ACLU - an organization decidedly not right-wing - but his support of the organization and its ideals were tepid at best: he supposed "you become a member as soon as you contribute money, and I may have contributed money a good many years back," but "I didn't start going to a meeting of the organization until I was — I have only been to about four perhaps, in Dallas, four meetings" (2H387).

Not exactly what you'd call an "activist" by any stretch of the imagination, hardly a devout follower, and really not much of a "member" at all when you get right down to it.

ACLU ... JBS ... CPUSA ... what exactly was Michael anyway, if he could be classified at all? Despite the appearance of frugalilty - not to necessarily say "poverty" - while his wife lived in a tiny Irving bungalow, and which he himself claimed as home in March 1964 (he lived in an apartment in Dallas during the year prior that he and Ruth were separated), Michael was a design engineer at Bell Helicopter in nearby Fort Worth (he said it was "difficult to say" if he had a security clearance for his job), not generally a meager profession, and especially in the times of and leading to Vietnam.

His profession aside, Michael Paine did not come from poor stock. According to a page on which Michael and Ruth are referred to as "a tiny footnote in history," Michael Paine was of a lineage that has more recently culminated with former Democratic Presidential candidate and Senator from Massachusetts John Forbes Kerry (another "JFK" from Massachusetts - how ironic!), but which also included the former president of Alexander Graham Bell's telephone company, the CEO of the shipping empire of William Russell (founder of Yale's Skull and Bones Society), a shipping captain who "played a prominent role in the outbreak of the Chinese Opium War," a railroad tycoon, and a wealthy US Governor General of the Phillipines (ref: Wikipedia, "The Forbes Family of China and Boston").

Michael's mother, the former Ruth Forbes, was the Governor General's niece. The elder Ruth was an artist and a great-grandaughter of the man who owned Walden Pond and who employed the writer Henry David Thoreau who made it famous, Ralph Waldo Emerson. She was also reputed to be a long-time friend of Mary Bancroft, Allen Dulles' wartime lover and his chief contact with one of the leaders of the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, according to JFK researcher Richard Bartholomew.

After being divorced from Lyman, Michael's mother married her third husband in 1948, philosopher and inventor Arthur Middleton Young, who has been called "the greatest theoretical genius since Einstein," and whose most prominent and lasting invention was the Bell helicopter. I think it's fair to say that it wasn't at any country "folk dance" that Michael's mother met "A.Y."

Thus, even while Young was no longer directly associated with Bell after 1953, it would nevertheless seem that Michael may not have been such an "ordinary" engineer after all, and that the good folks at Bell Textron were as happy to meet "the stepson of A.Y." as the Trotskyists were to meet "the son of Lyman." It is difficult to imagine that he was paid at a level to only be able to afford for his wife, a kindergarten teacher from whom he was estranged since September 1963, a mere thousand-square-foot tract home.

That home is valued at under $100,000 today, meaning that in the early '60s, the Paines probably bought it for well under $5000. Surely an engineer with a pedigree such as Michael's, working as a "favored" employee (as a step-son to the inventor of Bell's raison d'etre) and - supposedly, but also likely - with trust funds of his own supporting him probably could have much done better if he'd wanted to.

(For those ultra-conspiracists among us, it should be noted that an anagram of "Arthur M. Young" is "naughty rumor" ... which we all recognize as being those things that the Warren Commission sought hardest to quash, even while the rest of official Washington sought only to edify the man's creation!)

What is interesting to me is that Michael Paine's testimony seemed to hold its share of self-corrections, which one might almost preface with an "oops!" For example:

There happens to be a member of our choir, a paid soloist who is a John Birch advocate so I have been applying — [

oops!

] so I have been telling her,

that I wanted to go

.

... and later:

[T]here isn't much liberal out there [around Dallas] and so I wanted to be able to speak their language and know that their fears — [

oops!

] and

be familiar with their feelings and attitudes

"Oops," he didn't mean to say he'd been applying to become a Bircher, he merely "wanted to go" to a meeting out of mere curiosity, and "Oops," he wasn't trying to assimilate/ingratiate himself into the ACLU by learning to "speak their language," but merely wanted to "be familiar with their feelings and attitudes." One can only wonder where the comment about their "fears" was headed before he'd caught himself!

If I'm remembering correctly - I haven't finished reading his testimony yet - one of the four ACLU meetings he'd attended in Dallas is one that he went to in the company of Lee Oswald and (again, if memory serves) at his behest, not Oswald's.

While dad Lyman appeared to be one of the "higher-ups" in a Trotskyite movement, the claims of his having "infiltrated" and "tore apart" that would suggest that he was not necessarily what he appeared to be. As I recall from one of more of the "Lyman" Google links, he was also considered in the '50s to assist the CIA in some fashion, but the idea was rejected for unspecified reasons. He did, however, do something for the Company in the '60s. If that and his association with a man reputed to have trained CIA operatives are true, it would stand to reason that his "Communist" leanings were a mere facade.

Thus, even if Communism was, in fact, "a generational trend passed on to their children," it doesn't appear to be one that was necessarily "passed on" to young Michael ... if indeed such a "trend" existed in the first place (like bleached blond hair being a "dominant gene," eh?). Indeed, based on their lineage, it would seem that Messers Paine would more likely gravitate toward the conservative - that is "right" - spectrum than the liberal. Even if Lyman were a dyed-in-the-wool Trotskyite (a far cry from Marxist-Leninism), young Michael wouldn't be the first progeny to reject, even rebel against the politics of his forebear.

Bell Helicopter also doesn't seem like the kind of place to harbor Commies either, especially in its design engineering departments, security clearance or not. ("Now, Michael, remember to promise that you won't give these plans to anyone with a funny accent, okay?")

Even if Michael and Ruth were "card-carrying" Commies, about all that that might prove is that they were FBI informants since without FBI "infiltrators'" dues, chances are that there'd be no "Communist Party" in the USA! I don't have the reference at hand, but it strikes me that there were literally hundreds around the country who were true "threats" compared with many hundreds more who wore a badge when they weren't at a "party" meeting!

Without delving too far into how "convenient" it would be to have the "patsy" and his Soviet wife in the care and custody of a pair of right-wingers cum "liberals," it makes entirely much more sense - as perhaps betrayed by Michael Paine's words about "applying" to the JBS and his purported espousal of their "propaganda" as "fact before the Commission" - that the Paines were much more comfortable than they portrayed during that time period, and that they were much more likely conservatives than "high-ranking members" of the left-wing Communist Party.

Sorry Duke, didn't see your request.

What I was referring to was this part of his testimony:

Mr. LIEBELER - Did you ever join any of these organizations?

Mr. PAINE - Well, I didn't know of any organization as such.

I went to this meeting in downtown New York. I didn't know--so therefore I knew three groups. Maybe it was the Socialist group and the Stalinist group and I think the group that Lyman was in, I don't know, maybe he was a Socialist.

Mr. LIEBELER - Which was the second group, was it the Stalinist?

Mr. PAINE - I mentioned the Stalinist, Dubinsky, David Dubinsky, was the only name I remember aside from Stalin, was a name I remember there, and I can't now remember whose side who was on.

The only way anyone could call Dubinsky a Stalinist would be by believing Bircher propaganda. Dubinsky was in the CIA's pocket as part of the use of labor in anti-Communist projects. Bircher's were the only ones to ever call him a "Stalinist".

With regard to MP attending meetings of right wing groups... this activity started just after his split with Ruth in '62 when he attended a NIC meeting. This was also about the time Larrie Schmidt was trying to infiltrate that particular group (see CE 1036 letter from Schmidt to Jones dated Nov 2, 1962).

Mr. PAINE - No; I have never seen General Walker that I can recall.

Mr. LIEBELER - You have never seen Walker?

Mr. PAINE - Unless he was--in a year previous to that I had been to the Indignation Committee meeting--no-- that is the answer to your previous question.

Edited May 2, 2006 by Greg Parker

[Robert Howard]

True or False - Ruth Paine was requesting information on Lee Harvey Oswald as far back as 1957.

Partial Answer: True, although I have never seen the document number for either a F.B.I. or O.N.I letter/memorandum; if both Gus Russo and John Newman are in agreement on that salient fact, it must be so?

"According to Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba and the Garrison Case by James Di Eugenio, "Michael Levy? has unearthed a Navy Department document which reports" that “Ruth Paine was requesting information about the family of Lee Harvey Oswald in 1957"

According to researcher Gus Russo, FBI and ONI documents reveal that Michael Paine's wife, Ruth, was making inquiries about Lee Harvey Oswald in 1957 -- six years before the Warren Commission claimed they had met.149

149. Bancroft, Autobiography..., pp. 50, 54, passim; Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, pp. 31."

Edited May 6, 2006 by Robert Howard

[Jack White]

Very nice research on the Paines, Duke!

It is clear to most researchers that Ruth and Michael had HIGH CONNECTIONS

which placed them at the nexus of the control of the patsy. You have pulled

together many of the relevant details.

The Paines may have been UNWITTING ABOUT THE ASSASSINATION, but were

clearly WITTING about being the control agents for Lee and Harvey. The MONITORED

PHONE CALL between the pair on 11-22 is very revealing of them as likely being

unwitting.

Good job.

Jack

Edited May 7, 2006 by Jack White

[Greg Parker]

Duke,

taking your "are things always as they seem?" theme, here is another example of where one might consider this regarding the Paines:

It is commonly accepted that one of the four ACLU meetings he'd attended in Dallas is one that he went to in the company of Lee Oswald and at his behest, not Oswald's.

But the only evidence for this is the say-so of Mike Paine and his good bud from Bell, Frank Krystinik.

Dallas ACLU Prez, Greg Olds told the FBI he was at the meeting in question (10/25/63) and "that he believed Oswald had been brought to the meeting by Michael Paine," and that he "did not recall seeing Oswald there, and certainly does not recall him entering into any discussions. He has heard, but once again, he cannot recall the source, that Oswald did have something to say at this meeting. He, however, does not know what Oswald was supposed to have said."

So Olds can't recall Oswald being there, let alone anyone who may have brought him.

Another at the meeting was Mike Paine's minister from the Unitarian Church, Rev Byrd Helligas. He was also interviewed by the FBI and did recall Oswald being there. In fact, he recalled talking to him. When asked however, if he could furnish the names of anyone else at the meeting who might have had discussions with Oswald, all he could recall was that someone had told him that Oswald had had a few things to say that night - but couldn't recall who told him that, nor did he himself recall Oswald commenting on anything during the meeting (his own conversation with Oswald was during a coffee break, and Oswald had discussed how the projector Helligas had been using worked.

Strike two for MP.

Now step into the Alternate Universe of Paine:

CE 1151 is a report by SA Will Hayden Griffen dated Dec 4, 1963 and details the results of his interview with Barry Cohen of the Dallas ACLU:

Mr BARRY M COHEN appeared voluntarily at the Dallas office of the FBI and advised his telephone number EM- 1-7570. COHEN is a member of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and is presently attending the University of Texas working on his Master's Degree in Russian History. COHEN is very active in the ACLU advised he had been discussing with Mr GREG OLDS, home phone AD 1-0841, office phone AD 5-3353, about LEE HARVEY OSWALD joining the ACLU. Oswald picked up a blank membership and mailed the mebership with a $2.00 fee to the National Headquarters of ACLU in New York.

Approximately one month prior to the President's assassination, OSWALD attended a meeting of the ACLU, but Cohen was not at this meeting. Cohen started an investigation to determine why OSWALD attended this meeting and found that a Mrs PAINE with whom OSWALD'S wife was residing, invited Oswald as her guest to this meeting.

Since Cohen wasn't at the meeting himself, and since Olds didn't recall seeing Oswald there, I have to wonder if the information on picking up an application didn't come from the same "unrecalled sources" who had spread rumors about Oswald's alleged comments during the meeting... the comments that is, that no one apparently heard except Mike and Frank.

Olds was called before the WC, but was not asked a single question about that meeting. And Cohen was not called at all.

The Alternate Universe of the Paines is indeed, a fascinating place to visit, but to quote from a movie I've never actually watched, "you must unlearn what you have learned" before you enter.

Edited May 7, 2006 by Greg Parker

[Jack White]

Very nice research on the Paines, Duke!

It is clear to most researchers that Ruth and Michael had HIGH CONNECTIONS

which placed them at the nexus of the control of the patsy. You have pulled

together many of the relevant details.

The Paines may have been UNWITTING ABOUT THE ASSASSINATION, but were

clearly WITTING about being the control agents for Lee and Harvey. The MONITORED

PHONE CALL between the pair on 11-22 is very revealing of them as likely being

unwitting.

Good job.

Jack

John Armstrong thoroughly covers the early association of Ruth Paine with Oswald

in HARVEY AND LEE. Look in the index under Antioch College, Yellow Springs Ohio,

Ruth Paine, etc...for instance pages 166-167.

[James Richards]

Dallas ACLU Prez, Greg Olds told the FBI he was at the meeting in question (10/25/63) and "that he believed Oswald had been brought to the meeting by Michael Paine," and that he "did not recall seeing Oswald there, and certainly does not recall him entering into any discussions. He has heard, but once again, he cannot recall the source, that Oswald did have something to say at this meeting. He, however, does not know what Oswald was supposed to have said." (Greg Parker)

Hi Greg,

Is this the same Greg Olds who in the late 1960's was editor of the Texas Observer? If so, during this period, Olds found himself in some hot water when Time, Inc. began investigating the unauthorized existence and screening of the Zapruder film in Austin.

Olds allegedly tried to sell copies for $5:00.

A lawyer for Time claimed that there was only three authorized copies. One was in Time, Inc.'s files, the FBI had another and the one which served the Warren Commission which had subsequently been placed in the National Archives. Time's copy of the film at this point was with Jim Garrison.

Time were most interested in finding out who was responsible for this unauthorized version.

FWIW.

James

Edited May 7, 2006 by James Richards

[Greg Parker]

Dallas ACLU Prez, Greg Olds told the FBI he was at the meeting in question (10/25/63) and "that he believed Oswald had been brought to the meeting by Michael Paine," and that he "did not recall seeing Oswald there, and certainly does not recall him entering into any discussions. He has heard, but once again, he cannot recall the source, that Oswald did have something to say at this meeting. He, however, does not know what Oswald was supposed to have said." (Greg Parker)

Hi Greg,

Is this the same Greg Olds who in the late 1960's was editor of the Texas Observer? If so, during this period, Olds found himself in some hot water when Time, Inc. began investigating the unauthorized existence and screening of the Zapruder film in Austin.

Olds allegedly tried to sell copies for $5:00.

A lawyer for Time claimed that there was only three authorized copies. One was in Time, Inc.'s files, the FBI had another and the one which served the Warren Commission which had subsequently been placed in the National Archives. Time's copy of the film at this point was with Jim Garrison.

Time were most interested in finding out who was responsible for this unauthorized version.

FWIW.

James

James, wasn't aware of the Zap problem, but yes, it has to be the same guy. Olds is still an editor (or was last I checked a couple of years ago).

[James Richards]

Thanks, Greg.

If I remember correctly, in early 1964, Greg Olds and the ACLU took some interest in Marina Oswald and her seclusion by the Secret Service stating that they wanted to make sure her rights were being observed.

Also, regarding Frank Krystinik, did you ever come across an associate by the name of Captain D.A. Sooy of the Dallas Naval Air Station? I'm curious as I have him listed in my notes but not why. Talk about frustrating.

James

[Greg Parker]

Thanks, Greg.

If I remember correctly, in early 1964, Greg Olds and the ACLU took some interest in Marina Oswald and her seclusion by the Secret Service stating that they wanted to make sure her rights were being observed.

Also, regarding Frank Krystinik, did you ever come across an associate by the name of Captain D.A. Sooy of the Dallas Naval Air Station? I'm curious as I have him listed in my notes but not why. Talk about frustrating.

James

James, Sooy was ONI.

[James Richards]

Thanks, Greg.

If I remember correctly, in early 1964, Greg Olds and the ACLU took some interest in Marina Oswald and her seclusion by the Secret Service stating that they wanted to make sure her rights were being observed.

Also, regarding Frank Krystinik, did you ever come across an associate by the name of Captain D.A. Sooy of the Dallas Naval Air Station? I'm curious as I have him listed in my notes but not why. Talk about frustrating.

James

James, Sooy was ONI.

Thanks, Greg. That is indeed interesting.

I dragged out some old boxes of clippings looking for Sooy and what his connection to Frank Krystinik may have been. I didn't find anything about that was but I did discover that in 1956, Sooy took up the post of Inspector General on the Staff of the Commandant, 15th Naval District, Balboa, Panama Canal Zone.

Do you have anything that connects him to Krystinik and or Michael Paine?

The image below shows D.A. Sooy third from the left. On the far left is Kelly Smith, chief of Chance Vought tool engineers. Acting State President of the Navy League W.H. Wright is on the far right.

FWIW.

James