On November 22, 1993 THE VANCOUVER SUN published an article I wrote, commemorating the thirtieth anniversary of JFK's assassination [which was republished at my suggestion on November 22, 2003 and is available at http://www.kenrahn.com/JFK/JFK.html - click onto "recent additions on the sidebar and scroll down to title or click onto "the critics" and my name.] A few days later I received a phone call from a very articulate reader, who thought I might be interested in some information he had received back in 1978 while serving time at the former "Okalla" prison in Burnaby, B.C. on a drug-related charge.
The caller, whose first name is Bob, described having met a former assistant to Howard Hughes, John Meier (the subject of AGE OF SECRETS by Gerald Bellett of THE VANCOUVER SUN), at Okalla, who was in the process of being extradicted to the U.S. (Meier has lived in a suburb of Vancouver since the early 1970s). Bob spent a great deal of time talking to Meier about American politics and in particular his involvement with Howard Hughes (who briefly lived at the Bayshore Inn in Vancouver in 1972).
According to Bob, Meier indicated at some point in their conversations that, when he realized he was being replaced as Hughes' right-hand man by several "Mormons from Utah", he quietly travelled to Hughes's "record centre" in both the Bahamas and Los Angeles (on Romaine St.), intent on retrieving any documents that he felt might be used against him. While going through the records in the Bahamas, he allegedly "found evidence of pay orders" related to the assassination of President Kennedy. (Hughes was closely associated with Robert Maheu, who played an important role in the CIA-Mafia plot to kill Castro; Maheu, in turn, was, and still is, a close friend of James Phelan, the former reporter and apparent FBI informant, who wrote an "expose" on the Garrison investigation in May, 1967.)
(I corresponded with Phelan by snail-mail for two years around the time of Oliver Stone's film, until he realized that I was a supporter of Garrison; I was also corresponding with Perry Russo at the same time, as well as writer/researcher Jim DeEugenio in L.A.)
Phelan died a couple of years ago after co-writing a final book on Hughes, and his wife sent me a registered letter warning me not to quote from my correspondence with her late husband, after I had mentioned plans for an article on him at alt.assassination.jfk. Phelan himself had also sent me registered letter earlier, but oddly enough neither one had their lawyer contact me, who was mentioned in their two letters. Phelan's wife seems to believe the letters sent to me are her property, and therefore can't be used without her permission. I never did write the article but still have the dozen or so letters from Jim and copies of my letters to him, plus the registered ones. Jim and I also talked on the phone a few times.)
In my initial conversation with Bob, I learned that he had continued to remain in contact with Meier for some years to come, and that Bob had hoped to write a book on Meier's fascination career after numerous interview sessions. He was even able to provide me with Meier's address in Tsawassen, which is located close to the U.S. border south of Vancouver, next to Pt. Roberts, Washington (where Meier was kidnapped by U.S. authorities back in the late 1970s, while returning from the beach with his family and friends, as described in AGE OF SECRETS). According to his notes of the telephone conversation, he also was aware of research being done by Gerry Bellett, who had previously written for a small newspaper in New Westminster (THE COLUMBIAN).
Earlier this year [1996] I spoke to Bob again by phone at his residence in Vancouver, mentioning Bellett's book to him, which had been favourably reviewed in THE VANCOUVER SUN, and which he was anxious to read. I later contacted him again, after describing Meier's allegations to author Anthony Summers, who is in the midst of writing a biography on Richard Nixon (Bellett's book gives an intriguing explanation for the Watergate break-in.) Bob was quite agreeable to being interviewed about his experience with Meier, and consequently a research assistant for Summers phoned me (as well as Bob) from Portland, Oregon. After attempting to contact Meier himself without success (his phone number, obtained from the publisher, automatically switches to an answering machine), I spoke to Gerry Bellett, and briefly described the allegation to him. Although he was quite skeptical about Hughes being linked to the assassination of JFK, he agreed to mention my conversation with Bob to Meier, and in a later conversation, he indicated that no such comments had been made by Meier to Bob.
However, a tantalizing reference to the assassination is made on pages 252-53 of AGE OF SECRETS (which I had not yet read wh n I phoned Bellett), and I will leave it to the reader to decide if there is any possible
correlation:
"...Shocking as they were..... never to mention the file again." [see pages 252-53 for full quote]
It is possible that Meier has been reluctant to come forward with this information related to Hughes, but nevertheless needed to tell someone what he knew, knowing full well that he could simply deny having made such a statement if it was ever brought to his attention in the distant future. If that was the plan, it has come to pass.
