Jim Root

Martin

My point is to take a person that I beleive to be a knowledgable prosecutor and a person that has spent a great deal of time on researching the assassination, as a person who would prosecute Oswald would have done, and trying to look at what Bugliosi has said while attempting to provide examples of where what he says applies to another person.

For example Bugliosi's dealing with the Silvia Odio incident is masterful in my opinion. Bugliosi's position seems to fall right in line with Edwin Walkers research into the Warren Commission Report and those portions dealing with Silvia Odio. It is in this area that even Bugliosi leaves open the possibility that Oswald had a guiding hand that was leading him toward the TSBD building and that fateful date in history.

This is no minor consulation prize on the part of Bugliosi and begs me to believe that he is not a lost cause.

Jim Root

John

It seems that the State Dept. would receive a copy of FBI reports as well as the Washington Office of the FBI and the local office that was keeping the file. If the file had been forwarded or was being requested the office that was sending or receiving the file would get a copy as well.

I believe it was the State Dept. file that was forwarded to Richard Helms. This was confirmed to John Newman by a former CIA routing secretary named Jane Roman when she was interviewed by John Newman and Jefferson Morley on November 2, 1994.

Article: "What Jane Roman Said"

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/morley3.htm

Of course the third Hosty note remains a mystery but we can assume that if it were found the routing on it could be deciphered as were the other two Hosty notes journey deciphered by Morley and Newman.

Jim Root

Martin

You ask, "And how much evidence relating to the assassination did the US federal government withhold before the FOIA and the ARRB?"

I have no idea.

What I do know for a fact is that John J. McColy did not give Hosty's third note a Commission Exhibit number. I know for a fact that John Newman was able to follow the information trail attached to Hosty's previous two notes to prove that FBI Agent Hosty's information about Lee Harvey Oswald was going directly to Richard Helms prior to the assassination of JFK. While I can only speculate on who had access to Hosty's third note, because no one has seen it, it seems plausible to believe that Richard Helms had access to it just as he had access to the other two notes but but we know for a fact that this third note has never been listed as information that was ever in CIA files.

I do know for a fact that the Raleigh Call was never put into evidence in the Warrren Commission Report and I do know for a fact that during WWII a man named John B. Hurt was supplying extremely sensitive intelligence information directly to John J. McCloy. I also know for a fact that the work that John B. Hurt did between 1945 and his retirement in 1963 is still, to this day classified.

Thirdly I do know for a fact that the passenger list for Oswald's flight from London to Helsinki were also not entered into the Warren Commission Record while numerous inteviews were conducted with people that had riden on buses and boats or who had come into contact with Oswald in a variety of ways were interviewed. I also know for a fact that McCloy used passenger lists and travel logs to break the Black Tom (WWI espionage) Case and he was very familiar with the importance of passenger lists and how they can be used to prove involvement (in the Black Tom Case it was the involvement of the German Government). Yet he did not push for those passenger lists to be made available as he had done in the Black Tome Case.

Rather than attempting to shoot myself in the foot I am perhaps, at worst, taking a shot in the dark by suggesting that in three specific examples John J. McCloy was factually complicit in the withholding of information and in each of those three specific cases it can be shown that a direct link can be made between McCloy giving us reason to look at McCloy as a possible suspect because of the fact that this information was withheld from the American public.

Jim Root

Robert

This from an official CFR publication:

Whitney H. Shepardson (1890-1966)

Whitney Shepardson was an international business executive, editor, and author whose strong interest in international affairs began when he attended the Versailles peace conference in 1919. He returned to New York and helped found the Council on Foreign Relations in 1921. From 1934 to 1940, he was the principal editor of The United States in World Affairs, the Council’s annual review of world events. During World War II, Mr. Shepardson headed the Secret Intelligence unit of the Office of Strategic Services (which became the CIA). From 1953 to 1956, he served as president of the Free Europe Committee, operator of Radio Free Europe.

Please add to yor list of distingushed persons

Jim Root

Duncan

Thank you for the kind words.

As I stated previously I did not start my inquiry believing that there had been a conspiracy. Some 20 years later I "speculate" that there was.

Each speculation has led to the need to find some sort of supporting evidence which has usually led to new speculations. When I read Bugliosi's book I found it interesting that he himnself pointed out that if you prove that a person has withheld information that would point toward that persons own guilt, the withholding of that information can, in itself, be presented as evidence to prove guilt.

In his book Bugliosi used the fact that Oswald withheld the information that he had lived at the residence where the back yard photos had been taken after Oswald had been shown the backyard photos. I am not an attorney but do believe that it is factual to state that the withholding from evidence of the three facts that I brought up in my last post all can be associated with John J. McCloy and in two out of the three McCloy is at best negligent for failing to have the infomation produced in the record. On the other hand each piece of that informtion which was withheld could point directly at McCloy, as my research had shown by following this particular line of speculation.

While the Warren Commission make no reference to the "Raleigh Call" and the call was made to a name that John J. McCloy could be proveably associated with allows us, reasonably, to speculate that the withholding of this informaiton may be a key to proving the guilt of a person such as McCloy.

McCloy's failure to give Hosty's third note a Commission Exhibit Number (and the fact that this note has never been put on a JFK CIA documents record while Hosty's previous two notes made it into the hands of Richard Helms) leads me to speculate that the record of who had access to that information could well provide an answer to the biggest question, "Who was the big fish?"

The passenger lists from Oswald's travel from London to Helsinki was the beginning of my speculation into conspiracy. When I first read the Warren Commission Report I was totally unaware of the attempted assassination of Edwin Walker. I speculated on a motive which might, some how, be uncovered on why Oswald would have believed that Walker was the head of some evil organization and that his assassination would be a benifit to the world just as the assassination of Hitler in the 1930's would have been a benifit to the world. It took several years to discover that Walker was traveling in Euurope at the same time as Oswald but low and behold the passenger lists end up missing from the "official" inquiry into the assassination of JFK.

But there was another problem with this speculation about Oswwald's travel, Oswald was going to Helsinki and Walker was on his way to Augsburg, Germany (way to the South of Oswald's travel). Several years of speculation and I find that Oswald had appaently led his friend Delgado to believe that Oswald was going to Germany. Then I find that the day before Oswald lands in Helsinki the American Ambassador in Helsinki sends a message to the State Department giving a detailed account of how to obtain a visa into the Soviet Union via the Soviet Embassy in Helsinki. Oswald it seems, either coincidentally or with helps, follows this exact procedure and receives a visa within 24 hours. I also discover that Walker has been repeatedly used by General Maxwell Taylor to do specific jobs for him as well as at least three specific jobs that John J. McCloy had wanted done. Was it possible for Oswald and Walker to have been on the same airplane although they apparently had two very different destination. Walker would have traveled to either Hamburg or Frankfurt on his way to Augsburg, Germany. With research that has been reviewed by Chris Mills (and would not have been possible without the help of Antti Hynonen) we find that the most likely of the two planes that Oswald may have taken to Helsinki began the day in Frankfurt then traveled to Hamburg then Stockholm and finally to Helsinki. Further we find that there were flights from London to either Frankfurt or Hamburg which would have allowed London passengers to board the plane that would eventually end up in Stockholm.

Via speculation we can prove that it was possible for both Oswald and Walker to be on the same plane at the same time and it is a fact that the passenger lists were not provided to the Warren Commission investigators but we know, according to the support documents of the Warren Commissions work that Oswald spent $111.90 on travel that day (proving that available informaiton was withheld). This speculation gives cause for why Oswald, the patsy who had gone to the Soviet Union, would have believed, as he is alledged to have said, that Walker was the head of a very bad organization and needed to be eliminated.

Put on top of this Oswald's own words that he said in a speech at Spring Hill College. It was at Spring Hill that Oswald speaks about the failure of the Paris Summit, the U-2 incident and how there are powerful forces in both the Soviet Union and the United States that are willing to sabotage efforts at bringing the two countries together and we find a man that did truely believe that he had been made a patsy when he traveled to the Soviet Union, especially if he did actually reveil secrets that he beleived led to the downing of the U-2 and thus the failure of the Paris Summit. We can only speculate on the guilt that Oswald, a patsy, may have had to bare for any responsibility that he may have had in the events that unfolded after his defection to the Soviet Union.

Jim Root

Duncan

Within my speculations I have named the "they" who would need Lee Harvey Oswald to be the "patsy" as John J. McCloy.

Following up on this speculation my research led to Attorney Bellin and the, I believe, Rockefeller Commission. Bellin asked the CIA to do a forensic study of Oswwald to see if he was mentally capable of committing the murder of John F. Kennedy. Interestingly the CIA report showed that with the information that was available to the government in 1963, if (and it is an interesting if), they (CIA phsyco docs) had known that Oswald had attempted to murder Maj. Gen. Edwin Walker they would have been able to predict that Oswald, if given the opportunity, would kill the President.

If the Warren Commission was an attempt to frame Oswald, as many suggest, a study simaliar to the Bellin study would have gone a long way toward pointing toward the guilt of Oswald. It was not done at that time and I guess we could ask why? Following this line of speculation we might ask how the conspirators would have known that Oswald may have attempted to take the life of Walker as Marina continues to suggest that he did to this day. If you want to believe the testimony then we find that George de Mohrenschildt (brother of Demitri) went to Oswalds home the day after the attempted assassination of Walker and asked, something like, "how did you miss?" before disappearing from the scene.

Remembering that Demitri de Morhrenschildt and Whitney Shepardson started Radio Free Europe and that Whitney Shepardson appointed John J. McCloy to the World Bank as well as starting an organization called the Council on Foreign Relations. Extending this further we find that during WWII McCloy appointed Whitney Shepardson as the head of Secret Intelligence. A member of SI was Richard Helms and in June of 1959 Helms and Shepardson are meeting about what one former OSS agent suggested was going to be an off track mission via Helsinki Finland in the near future. A few months after these meeting Lee Harvey Oswald would defect to the Soviet Union via Helsinki and threaten to give up secrets about the U-2 Spy Plane. Interestingly at the same time that Oswald is defecting to the Soviet Union John J. McCloy is expressing a fear that the proposed Limited Test Ban Treaty would leave the United States at a disadvantage in the Cold War. That Treaty was never signed after the May 1, 1960 U-2 affair derailed the Paris Summit. McCloy's wish came true.

And Oswald would say, while in custody after the assassination of JFK, "the reason I'm being arrested is that I went to the Soviet Union, I'm a patsy." It has been a difficult struggle to follow speculation but in answer to your question I will speculate that John J. McCloy did need the patsy Oswald to eliminate a President that he had had a disagreement with over Nuclear Disarmament talks. Interestingly McCloy is then appointed to the Warren Commission where, at least to me, 3 major points are covered up (A. Oswald's plane flight/passenger list from London to Helsinki, B. Hosty's third note that identified exactly where Lee Harvey Oswald was working prior to the design of the motorcade route and C. The attempted phone call to John Hurt made by Lee Harvey Oswald).

Perhaps even more interesting to speculate upon is why the assassination was done. While some speculate that it was to provoke an invasion of Cuba or a retaliation by the Mafia for RFK crusade against them or even Cuban exiles for JFK's failure to support them at the Bay of Pigs. I personally speculate that the conspirator/s may not have failed in what they hoped to accomplish.

After resigning as Kennedy's chief arms negotiator in June of 1963, Lyndon Johnson would reappoint McCloy to that position after the assassination and McCloy would continue to negotiate and achieve the Comprehensive Treaties that he had worked toward since 1945.

I speculate that it was McCloy who needed the "patsy" Oswald to accomplish his well designed goals. And McCloy did achieve his goals. My question is, "Is it reasonable to speculate that John J. McCloy used Lee Harvey Oswald as his "patsy" twice?"

I think even Oswald realized he had been made the "patsy" when he went to the Soviet Union, at least thats what Oswald gave as his own reason for being arrested for the assassination of JFK.

Jim Root

Duncan

I usually do not post about issues dealing with the events of November 22, 1963. Although I began my quest believing there was not a conspiracy most of my research has been an attempt to search for those who were conspirators and, of course, I mow believe that there was a conspiracy.

My research has led me to believe that the primary person behind the assassination may well have been John J. McCloy. It is interesting to point out that he is the first person, as a Warren Commissioner, to point out the difficulty of believing in the "magic bullet" as well as stoping the questioning of FBI Agent Hosty just after Hosty reported that he had identified where Oswald was working and that he had forwarded that information to the State Departmaent and to FBI headquarters. But I digress.

A majority of the reasons that researchers give that would lead us to belive that Oswald was a "patsy" for the conspirators begins with their belief that Oswald could not have been a shooter and that the fatal bullets could not have been fired from the TSBD or some sort of twist on this idea. The primary divide between "lone nutters" and conspiracy theorist hinges on this single point. I think it is fair to say that "lone nutters" continue to believe the offical version, that Oswald acted alone, therefore no conspiracy. "Lone nutters" seem all to willing to accept one shooter proves no conspiracy rather than accepting that a conspiracy could still have existed that would include Oswald. On the other hand it seems the "holy grail" of conspiracy theroists is that there must have been more than one shooter and that, therefore, even if Oswald was in any way involved he was actually "set up" as the "patsy" because the "magic bullet" is an impossibility.

I have spent a great deal of time pondering how a group of conspirators could have executed a plan so exact and percise that, to this day, it has alowed their names to remain a mystery. I at times speculate that if Oswald was the shooter for the conspirators they would want the world to believe that he was nothing more than a patsy and therefore not a shooter. If this speculation is correct then the conspiracy theorist have done more to protect the conspirators than to uncover who they actually were. If on the other hand Oswald was not a shooter and was the pre-determined "patsy" then they had to be sure that Oswald was in a place that the motorcade would pass at the exact time that the assassination would take place. In either case, Oswald a shooter or Oswald the "patsy" John J. McCloy's refusal to put Hosty's third note into the record and to investigate exactly who in government had access to the knowledge of where Oswald was working prior to the final decissions on the exact motorcade route leads me to suggest that McCloy didn't want that information to become public. I can only speculate on why McCloy would not want it public but for the attorney who broke the Black Tom case not to want to know who in government had access to where Oswald was working prior to the Dallas visit is either complete negligence or part of a greater coverup.

On the other hand it seems that McCloy did want the public to know about the controversy surrounding the "magic bullet" before the final Commission Report was completed.

I might suggest that McCloy needed Oswald to be a "patsy" so that the conspirators would never be caught.

Jim Root

J Raymond Carroll

You wrote:

"Helms also knew it was easy to get get an indirect commercial flight from London to Helsinki, yet he left suspicions lingering until Chris Mills -- who had none of the resources available to Helms --looked into the matter."

As you may remember Antti Hynonen and I did addtional research on this subject which was reviewed and endorsed by Chris Mills. Of the two flights which would have arrived in Helsinki in time for Oswald to "check into the Torni Hotel when he did in fact check in" only one picked up passengers in Stockholm before traveling to Helsinki (the second which arrived some 30 min. after the fisrt). If Oswald were on the second plane to arrive in Helsinki then Oswald having been in Stockholm would have some measure of truth. I do not believe the first plane landed in Stockholm as one of its many stops.

The Stockholm to Helsinki plane began its journey in Frankfurt, traveled to Hamburg and then to Stockholm. This was a daily route.

There are several interesting things about this route:

1) There was a flight from London to Frankfurt that would have arrived in time for Oswald to have taken this route before getting on the plane that would take him to Helsinki.

2) There was a flight from London to Hamburg which would have allowed Oswald to arrive in Hamburg to then hope the flight to Stockholm and Helsinki.

3) If Oswald would have traveled from La Harve to Paris instead of backtracking (and spending extra money) to London, the Paris route to Helsinki would have taken Oswald to Hamburg and then on the same plane to Stockholm/Helsinki with one major difference: Oswald would have landed in Helsinki the day before the State Department received the information about the Soviet Embassy in Helsinki and before it had been pointed out that a person who wanted to receive an "instant" visa into the Soviet Union via the Helsinki Embassy would need to first purchase First Class Intourist Vouchers (which Oswald did ) before applying for and receiving this visa.

4) The passenger list, while available at the time of the Warren Comiission , were never made public allowing for speculation that a sensitive name may well have been on the (or one of the) planes that Oswald used to reach Helsinki.

5) During the same time period that Oswald would be traveling to Helsinki Maj. Gen. Edwin Anderson Walker was traveling to take command of the 24th Infantry Division in Augsberg, Germany (in a change of command that was not in sequence to the normal tour and command change).

6) At the time the normal route from London to Augsburg would have put Walker on a London to Hamberg flight and then utilized ground transportaiton to complete the travel to Augsburg.

7) If Walker would have first traveled to NATO command before goint to Augsburg he would have traveled from London to Frankfurt.

I do not believe there would have been any more sensitive names in the flight records than to have found both Oswald and Walker on the same flight in October of 1959. Speculation of course but in the Warren Commission records they give the exact, to the penny, amount that Oswald spent on his travel from London to Helsinki, $111.90.

Seems someone knew what flight/s Oswald took Helsinki and who else was on the plane/s but after months of waiting choose not let the Warren Commission know.

I cover this in much more depth in my article "Serendipity" located in the JFK Online Seminars

Jim Root

William

You asked:

"Can you tell me how much $183.87 would be worth in today's world?

That's how much Oswald left Marina on the morning of 11/22/63, taking less than $20 with him."

Based on todays current silver value that would equal about $3500.00.

I am finding your documents to be a very interesting read.

Thanks

Jim Root

Bernice

Each year, in a class that I teach, I will hold up a 1963 US quarter. I will point out to my students that in 1963 that quarter could buy a gallon of gasoline. I then hold up a 2005 US quarter and explain that this quarter will today buy about 1/12th of a gallon of gasoline.

Returning to the the 1963 quarter I explain that because of the value of the silver in the 1963 quarter and with the current price of silver, the 1963 quarter would not only still buy a gallon of gasoline at todays prices but you would receive a little more than a dollar in change as well.

Jim Root

Robert

Thanks for the info.

You wrote:

"To further supplement that area it might be helpful to understand one key fact.

In World War II, while OP-20-G aka ONI, the Army Signal Corp, later the Signal Intelligence Service and specifically Bletchley Park, Hut 3 Capt. William Bundy was there,

and Kullback, Sinkov and Friedman were all working together, General MacArthur and Willoughby had their own crypto section independent of the aforementioned

"codebreakers." That is important and of course, the postwar Japanese occupation was MacArthur's turf, someone important left MacArthur's staff to go solo.....

Do you remember who it was?"

I do know that as Asst. Secretary of War John J. McCloy was sent to Japan after the War to have a "come to Jesus" meeting with MacArthur who was preceived at the time to be running his own show. If my memory serves me correctly the meeting was held in private and MacArthur exited the meeting looking rather sheepish. Seems McCloy was able to handle MacArthur better than President Truman would be able to at a later date.

More importantly I think you are right on point by directing attention to the multitude of different agencies that were all dealing with crypto intelligence. No one agency had exclusive control over the whole....or did some agency or person? Only recently we have learned of SI (Secret Intelligence) that was implimented during WWII to watch over our own OSS. Originated by McCloy and directied by Shepardson and Grombach we now know that it existed and that its existance was kept from the general public for 60 years.

Is it to much to suggest that, just as the British had "C" who coordinated all the various intelligence agencies in England, that the US would have their own "C"? If John J. McCloy's primary assignment (early in his tenure) as Asst. Sec. of War under Stimson was to travel to England to learn how to and then revamp the US Intelligence apparatus based upon the British system would not have created a "C" to coordinate the various US intelligence agencies?

Is it to much to suggest that John J. McCloy was America's "C" and as such would understand exactly the reaction of US Intelligence Agencies to the knowledge that the accused assassin of John F. Kennedy had even just uttered the name "John Hurt"?

Jim Root

Jim, a few things.... I read a post in the last day or two, on another thread on this forum authored by you or by Robert Howard. My impression is that John B. Hurt and Col. William Friedman and his wife, Elizebeth Smith Friedman were like family.:

From this William Friedman collection. (it's a file of 657 .pdf pages, for anyone inclined to click on this link.)

http://www.marshallfoundation.org/library/documents/FriedmanCollectionGuide.pdf

Item 936

Hurt, John B., Rationale of the Japanese Written Language, (Subtitle: The Japanese and their Classical Languages). Mimeographed pamphlet of 75 pp., probable date 1946.

A historical approach to the study of the development of the Japanese and their speech from remote times. Autographed by the author: ―To my friend who has been with me longest through unutterable circumstances.‖ This associate, Mr. Hurt, was deceased in 1966.

The post I read on the other thread referred to John B. Hurt's negative opinion of Joseph P. Kennedy. Could

this opinion have been influenced by Elizebeth's great effort to apprehend prohibition era bootlegger kingpins?

I don't think it even requires Elizebeth to have direct knowledge of involvement by Joseph Kennedy in specific

bootlegging operations for the Friedman's and John Hurt to resent Kennedy based on suspicions at the time about

how he made his fortune.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizebeth_Friedman#Government_service

John B. Hurt's reference above to William Friedman about "unutterable circumstances" influences me to suspect that Friedman, his wife, and John B. Hurt forged a bond of necessity over the years. Their top secret work was their lives and who could they share their lives with, outside of work, but with each other?

Tom: Both Friedman and Hurt suffered mental breakdowns while doing their high pressure jobs. Imagine working 16 hour days seven days a week at a job were literally 1000's of lives were on the line on a daily basis. The phrase "unuterable circumstances" was most likely deeply felt by both.

JR

These were three briliant people, the two Friedmans and John B. Hurt. I am wondering if Hurt and McCloy could be deeply involved in a plot against JFK without either of them being concerned about William or Elizebeth Friedman noticing. Even if William Friedman was supporting Hurt and McCloy, neither man could count on what Friedman had, or had not passed along over the years to his wife, especially concerning Edwin Walker.

I do not believe that Hurt was in any way involved in the plot to kill Kennedy. Rather it is my belief that the mere mention of his name by the accused assassin of Kennedy would send cold shivers up the backs of any person in the intelligence community that knew who John B. Hurt was. I believe that an immediate reaction would be a desire to silence Oswald as quickly as possible. But this line of thought would require that the actual conspirators would have to have knowledge of John B. Hurt, the work that he did and the impression it would have on the intelligence community if the accused assassin of Kennedy uttered his name.

We do know that two associates of Hurt were assigned to the Oswald case, Rowlett and Gardner. We also know that whatever Hurt was working on throughout the cold war is still classifies. It seems to make sense that an accused assassin that may or may not of had knowledge of Hurt would be a danger to US Intelligence. JOhn J. McCloy would have known that piece of information!

JR

Aside from Edwin Walker's visibility and his strange, public behavior, I could accept that your theory, Jim, is about the participation of the parties you named, in a series of activities vital to carrying out a complex plot in a manner subtle enough that even some of the more prominent players might not be aware of the ultimate goal.

Agreed. I do not believe that Walker was involved per se. I do believe that he would have knowledge of exactly who Lee Harvey Oswald was, especially if he had provided information to Oswald as he traveled from London to Helsinki in October of 1959. Walkers immediate reaction following the assassintion (interview with German magazine from a hotel in Sherveport, LA) is, in my opinion consistant with this belief. More importantly the letter from McCloy to Walker, that I uncovered, which was written in June of 1963 coincides exactly with McCloy's break with Kennedy and the Limited Test Ban Treaty and the decision on the Kennedy visit to Dallas the following November. If Walker was the one man who had had personal contact with Oswald and knew who he was and that Oswald was a US Intelligence asset (as Walker himself suggested) then Walker had to be nutralized. What better way than for the major conspirator, McCloy, to plant a letter that, under close inspection, could implicate Walker as a co-conspirator? Easy to believe since Walker was an outspoken critique of Kennedy and the assassination took place in Dallas, Walker's home turf.

JR

We also know Elizebeth had a passion for the study of the origins of the works of

Shakespeare. I picked this out of the Friedman items referenced in the file linked in the quote box above.:

Item 929

Anonymous, A Brief Account, The Folger Shakespeare Memorial Library, Published for the Trustees of Amherst College, n.d. 20 pp.

An interesting brochure about the repository of the greatest collection of Shakespeare First Folios (79 copies) in the world, as well as thousands of other books of the Elizabethan period. Gift of the Folger Library. Of the 238 first folios known to exist, the Folger has 79. Only 2 are in the original binding.

I recently posted about George Plimpton's father Francis Plimpton's lawfirm; about

Francis's law partner Eli Whitney Debevoise being the counsel to the High Commissioner of Germany and the Assistant HICOG during the same period McCloy was HICOG. I also posted that McCloy, in his capacity as Chariman of the Board of Trustees at Amherst College, had appointed Francis's brother as Amherst president.

I posted that the brother of John and David Lindsey, twins who were two of the ushers at the 1946 wedding of Nancy Bush, (William B. Macomber, Jr., was the best man, and later the best man of Thomas Devine.) George N Lindsey was a career partner at the Plimpton, Debevoise lawfirm and became the managing partner.

This is why the above information might be relevant.:

http://www.google.com/search?tbs=bks%3A1&tbo=1&q=trustees+shakespeare+library+washington%2C+dc+francis+plimpton+john+mccloy&btnG=Search+Books

Report: Volumes 1933-1934

1933 -

The Trustees of Amherst College and of The Folger Shakespeare Library Chairman of the Board: Honorary Chairman of the ... Jr. Trustees Emeriti: J. Seelye Bixler Walter Gellhorn Arthur Lee Kinsolving John J. McCloy Francis TP Plimpton ...

http://books.google.com/books?id=00kXAAAAIAAJ&pg=PR22&dq=trustees+shakespeare+library+washington,+dc+francis+plimpton+john+mccloy&hl=en&ei=JR-HTNvaM4e09gTF2-ziDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

Tom

Hope the above comments (hopefully they came out in red) help you understanding some of my thoughts on the subject.

Richard Helms, the man who was following the movements of Lee Harvey Oswald prior to the assassination, would seem to have a good reason to fear being named as a co-conspirator in the assassination and as such would be very useful in orchestrating a cover up in any areas as needed.....would you agree?

Jim Root

First: We know that the Raleigh Call was not reported in the Warren Commission Report but it is generally considered to be an accepted fact that the call was made by Lee Harvey Oswald

Second: John B. Hurt, at the time of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, had recently retired from the NSA (after over 30 years of service in the field of intelligence) and seems to have been vacationing in France.

Third: During WWII intelligence information translated by John B. Hurt (with hand written notes included) were sent directly to John J. McCloy.

Fourth: John B. Hurt's Cold War espionage work is still classified (the only person from William Friedmaan's original team of cryptologists whose work is still classified).

Fifth: Frank Rowlett and Meridith Gardner, two people closely associated with John B. Hurt, were assigned to investigate Lee Harvey Oswald for potential intelligence connections.

Sixth: By the mid 1930's Edwin Walker whad become associated with Friedman's group of cryptologists.

Seventh: John B. Hurt was instrumental in translating a decrypted message that led to Operation Stella Polaris (the Venona Project) and the work on breaking Soviet codes

Eighth: Frank Rowlett and Meridith Gardner would be in charge of the Venona Project and the breaking of Soviet codes

Ninth: Edwin Walker MAY (his position in Norway at the time suggests that he would have had at least a supervisory role)have been the man who dispatched the ship to pick up the Finnish Cryptologist for Operation Stella Polaris.

Tenth: Stella Polaris seems to have been a Secret Intelligence Operation orchestrated, in part, by Richard Helms, while stationed in Stockholm, and approved by a series of people that leads up to John J. McCloy and includes Whitney Shepardson and Calvin Bryce Hoover (who at the time of the assassination of John F. Kennedy was in Raleigh, North Carolina).

Thoughts

Jim Root

William

Of the original members of William Friedman's Team of Cryptologist (which became the NSA) only John B. Hurt's post war work is still classified in total. I was able to have an NSA Historian confirm some languages that Hurt spoke.......notably he left out confirmation that he spoke Russian.....

Hurt's first and third wife were the same person. She was a concert cellist and from my understanding was fluent in Russian. Family members suggest that John B. was as well.

While I have drawn the conclusion that by neglecting to confirm that he spoke Russian the NSA Historian (albeit in a round about way) was confirming that Hurt's still classified work may well have been centered around work dealing with the Russian languages.

Seems there may be a lot we still do not know about Cold War Crypto work, John B. Hurt and why Lee Harvey Oswald would make a phone call to someone with the name John Hurt.

Jim Root

Resurrecting old threads, is something I do to keep the focus centered, a sort of, discovering the epicenter, if you will.

Along those lines, a particularly hard to find book

On Active Service In Peace And War - Henry L. Stimson with McGeorge Bundy

is available for online viewing.....

See

http://www.archive.o...603mbp_djvu.txt

Did you know that our John B. Hurt authored a book?

It was called:

A Version of the Japanese Problem In The Signal Intelligence Service, later Signal Security Agency 1930-1945

[sanitized Copy furnished by NSA.]

Robert

I have had a copy of John B. Hurt's work for several years now. It is an interesting read and I have quoted from it in a few threads that I have posted in the past.

Couple of thoughts on Hurt's work:

He was not very kind in his opinion of Joseph Kennedy

He was not very good remembering names of associates and clearly points this out.

His reference to working with Meridith Gardner is not by name but is clearly implied

Stella Polaris is mentioned and how the code books recovered (drawing from memory) were returned to the Russians was also discussed

His reference to the Japanese negotiations with the Soviet Union to surrender prior to the dropping of the Atomic is an almost word for word rendering of John J. McCloy's words to Truman prior to Truman making the final decission to drop the Atomic bomb.

I might also, once again, point out that a Pentagon historian did verify to me that Hurt's translations (and hand written notes)were delivered directly to John J. McCloy.

Thanks for keeping the thread alive.

Jim Root

Tom

FYI

I was interested to read this portion of your post:

"In May 1957 General Bradburn was picked for assignment to WS117L, the first U.S. Air Force satellite project office, with duty at Western Development Division, ARDC, Los Angeles, Calif. This began a series of assignments of increasing responsibility in the field of military applications of earth satellites."

On Nov. 28,2004 I posted this dealing with WS117L and received no replies:

"The timming of the launch of the TIROS I Satellite on April 1, 1960 and the downing ot Francis Gary Powers on May 1, 1960 has intrigued me for many years.

Were the two events connected? If they were connected, the defection of Lee Harvey Oswald to Russia in October of 1959 and any information he may have provided the Soviets could place Oswald at the center of a highly classified intelligence operation dealing with the WS117L Program.

The Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) was an organization formed by the United States Army on February 1, 1956 (While Maxwell Taylor was Chief of Staff of the Army), at Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville, Alabama, taking over what was previously the Guided Missile Development Division, to develop the Redstone and Jupiter ballistic missiles. Its first commander was Major General John Mendaris. In July 1960 ABMA’s buildings and staff, including Wernher von Braun, were transferred to NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, which remains in the midst of the Redstone Arsenal.

The transfer of ABMA to NASA was one of the many disappoinments that led to Maxwell Taylor's distaste of the Eisenhower Administration.

Tiros I was built by the Army, and launched by an Army Redstone Missle for a, supposedly civilian project (I cannot accept this point).

In a local publication printed in Kerr County, Texas (Edwin Walker's home) in 1958 it states that Walker is working with "guided missiles." Nohing in Walker's military record supports this although the Arkansas Military District (integration of schools in Little Rock) where Walker was stationed at the time and the Redstone Arsenal are in close proximity.

http://www.met.fsu.e...tml/tiros1.html

http://www.stratmag....e-15/page03.htm

http://www.peterson....th/Timeline.asp

http://www.fas.org/s...gins/part09.htm

http://www.zianet.co...ance/samos.html

http://www.zianet.co...ning/midas.html

http://www.nasm.si.edu/research/dsh/artifa...S-discover.html

Jim Root"

I think it is interesting

Jim Root

Jim, on the slim chance you've missed this or more likely, you've already discounted it, or it has slipped your mind, AJ Weberman believed Angleton ran Oswald in an "off the books" Op...

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Z_BnQp0AB2sJ:www.ajweberman.com/nodules/nodule4.htm+weberman+angleton+golub&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

...ANGLETON did this on his own, with no approval from DCI Allen Dulles. In the midst of a series of military and civilian defections (The New York Times reported four defections prior to October 1959) evidence suggested ANGLETON instructed OSWALD to travel to the USSR via Helsinki and then to request Soviet citizenship. OSWALD was instructed that he was not to tell anyone, even his mother and brother, about this mission, since their reaction would be part of OSWALD'S cover.

OSWALD: SEPTEMBER 1959

OSWALD'S hardship discharge was granted in early September 1959, and he returned to Fort Worth to help his allegedly disabled mother. Marguerite Oswald reported that he gave her $100 and told her he was about to board a boat since he was working for an import/export company. OSWALD remained in Fort Worth two days, then left for New Orleans. On September 20, 1959, OSWALD boarded a Lykes Line cargo ship in New Orleans due to arrive in Le Havre, France, on October 8, 1959. Before sailing, he wrote to his mother that he had booked passage for Europe, adding: "Just remember above everything else that my values are very different from Robert or yours. I did not tell you about my plans because you could hardly be expected to understand." From Le Havre he took a ferry to Southampton. He arrived there on October 9, 1959. According to official British travel records he claimed he had no fixed address but planned to remain in the UK one week for vacation, before going on to "some school in Swisse." The Warren Report stated that on that same day, October 9, 1960, OSWALD traveled to London where he took an undetermined flight to Helsinki, Finland. [WR p690] Another section of the Warren Report had him arriving on Saturday, October 10, 1959. [WR p258]

OSWALD IN HELSINKI: OCTOBER 1959

On Saturday, October 10, 1959, OSWALD flew to Helsinki, Finland. ANGLETON controlled the CIA Station there. OSWALD registered at the Hotel Torni around midnight. The Warren Commission determined that the only direct flight from London to Helsinki on Saturday October 10, 1959, was on Finn Air 852 and it arrived at 11:33 p.m. - too late for OSWALD to have time to pass through Customs and other airport travel formalities and register in the hotel by midnight. [CIA 758-325, 768-337, 748-321] Could OSWALD have gotten through Customs, then hired a cab to take him to the hotel, in 20 minutes? In July 1964 the CIA discovered a flight which left London at 7:05 p.m. arriving at Stockholm at 1:30 a.m. then changing planes to SK 734 leaving Stockholm 3:15 a.m. arriving Helsinki 5:35 p.m. This investigation was conducted by Raymond Rocca and ANGLETON Deputy William Hood, Chief/Soviet Research/CI. [CIA 995-928; NARA 1993.06.19.11:19:56:370000] OSWALD did not arrive in Helsinki at 11:33 p.m. He arrived on an earlier flight at 5:35 p.m. This did not explain why OSWALD waited until midnight before registering at the hotel. The reason was because OSWALD was briefed on his mission at a safe location as soon after he arrived in Helsinki. The HSCA: "The Committee was unable to determine the circumstances surrounding OSWALD'S trip from London to Helsinki." [HSCA R p211]

OSWALD'S SOVIET VISA...

Tom

A lot of what I have gathered about Angleton and so many others is that if you take them at face value it can lead you further toward a tightly wound conspiracy involving others rather than a conspiracy involving them. That is not to suggest that they did not understand what had happened after the Kennedy assassination and were not involved in a cover up, but rather the dilemma they must have been in after the fact. Anybody that could be associated with Oswald could be associated with the assassination. Therefore, if I might be so bold as to suggest, self survival and their actual pledge of secrecy would be conviently used by the actual conspirators to ensure that certain aspects of Oswald's life would be concealed for reasons of "national security" and would enable the conspirators to remain unidentified.

Angelton's interview with Epstein (the Orchid Man) is, I believe as close as Angelton could come to letting people know the truth. It fits very well with Oswald's own "patsy" statement. More importantly what I here suggests is that the conspirators had to be at the absolute top of the intelligence heap to understand exactly how the complexities of the organizations would respond......who better than the man who designed the whole apparatus....John J. mcCloy.

Jim Root

Bernice

I ran SS # 386-22-1932 in the SS Death Index and came up empty. Cross checked with Earl A James....nothing then Earl James (over 120 entries) but no match to the SS #. Even checked 586 as the first three digits....nothing.

SS #s are issued by region and the 386 numbers would suggest Michigan (or areas close by) as the location where the SS # was issued.

Interesting!

Jim Root

Jack and Tom

Thank you for your responses. As you can see it is easy to speculate on this subject.

For Jack...."I suggest that this was to let his sponsors (know)he was receiving their (coded?) messages via RFE" For myself two questions are generated based upon this "speculation" that we seem to share.

Who were Lee Harvey Oswald's "sponsors" and who did Lee Harvey Oswald believe his "sponsors" to be?

This combination of questions is important because I believe Oswald, in his "patsy" comment, made his "patsy" statement while referrencing his trip to the Soviet Union. If whom Oswald believed he was working for was not whom he was actually working for then he was the "patsy" that he said that he was irregardless of the events that had occured in the hours leading up to his "patsy" quote. But this would provide motive for Oswald to commit the crime perhaps or if you perfer an understanding of why Oswald was selected to be at the scene of the crime and made a "patsy" for perhaps a second time.

Tom. You quickly connect Whitney Shepardson to the CFR and others which is of course important. The main name that you leave off in connection to Mr. Shepardson and my research is Richard Helms who was meeting with Shepardson in June of 1959 just prior to Oswald's "defection." While the puzzle that I have assembled in my research of the assassination seems very complicated and contains many pieces, the actual picture that has emerged is one that shows a very small number of participants (perhaps as few as 3) with a few others (2-3) who may have been able to be implicated if a conspiracy had been uncovered.

But what of the radio itself????? Seems the NSA and the Warren Commission were more interested in investigating and examining this radio than they were in tracking down who had access to Hosty's third note which identified where Oswald was working prior to the motorcade route being decided.

Jim Root

Just like to ask forum members if any have collected any information on Oswald's radio that they would be willing to share here?

Not sure where I am going with this but perhaps some of you have looked into the radio which Oswald owned and brought back to the USA from Russia.

Pricilla Johnson McMillian recently related that Oswald had said that he could receive Radio Liberty (Radio Free Europe) messages while in Russia on his radio. Since she visited the Radio Liberty office in Paris (I believe) just before she departed for Russia and her surprise interview with Oswald this may be of interest.

CE316 relates that in a letter to his brother Oswald also related that he could receive Radio Free Europe broadcasts on his radio. We know that US intelligence was reading mail that originated in the Soviet Union and can reasonable suppose that this information was known to US Intelligence from this source.

NSA seems to have studied his radio for cryto reasons. Whitney Shepardson who co-founded SI (along with John "Frenchy" Grombach) also founded, along with Demitri De Mohrenschildt (brother of George), Radio Liberty. Grombach first came into intelligence via his proposal for using domestic radio traffic to transmit intelligence information in the early 1930's.

Please if you have more info please post it because it seems to me that Oswald may have wanted people to know that he could hear Radio Liberty messages while in Russia.

Why, we can speculate upon.

Jim Root

Hi Antti

So good to hear from you again.....must thank you once again for the work you did on the FinAir info....much of that early work has helped to lead me to the information that I refer to in this post!

First let me make it clear that John B. Hurt did not play any part in the meetings of June 1959 nor would most of the men who were participating in them have known who John B. Hurt was with perhaps the exception of Calvin Bryce Hoover who had approved, as I understand it, Operation Stella Polaris based upon an Ultra Intercept that was translated by John B. Hurt and Richard Helms, whom as CIA laison to the Warren Commission would turn over investigation of Oswald's intelligence connections to John B. Hurts friends Frank Rowlett and Meridith Gardner.

The meetings of June 1959 are referenced in a series of letters between several of the former OSS/SI Stockholm personel and Calvin Bryce Hoover (whom, by the way. was, at the time of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, living in the area of Raleigh, North Carolina).

It seems that Wilho Tikander was encouraged to gather a large amount of information (some 200 pages) about operations conducted by the Stockholm Station during WWII. Apparently Tikander believed the information was being gathered by Whitney Shepardson for a book that he was writting (I have not found any written material by Shepardson that deals with the Tikander material). Within the Tikander material he (Tikander) is careful to point out that mention of the "codes" would be some sort of a violation of security even at this (14 years after the fact) time.

Several authors who are familiar with the work of the NSA, the Venona Project and Operation Stella Polaris have shared with me that they are familiar with this paper written by Tikander but none had ever seen it.

Reference is made in a letter by Tikander that he met with "Dick" Helms and his secretary (who was also a member of the OSS Station in Stockholm during WWII) recently and it seems that, of the group, both Shepardson and Hoover were also meeting with Helms on a more regular basis.

I am drawing from a bit of memory as I write this at this time but I beleive that Tikander mentions to Hoover in correspondence that he has heard through the "grapevine" that an off the record operation is soon to follow in the Helsinki area. This information is shared with Shepardson by Hoover and it is decided to keep Tikander at a distance from further discussions about the topic.

I do believe I shared with you several years back some information about a "mystery" agent that Tikander makes reference to in his work and I had asked you for some help in trying to identify who this person might have been. The information was so sketchy and would have needed to be researched from 1945 era Stockholm newspapers and we were left with a bit of a blank.

I have come to suspect that this particular person may have been Reino Häyhänen. Häyhänen was a Soviet agent who spent several years in Finland after the war living uder the assumed name of Eugene Nicolai Mäki. During the WWII Häyhänen, himself a Karilian Finn, had been working for the NKVD in Finland and one could suspect that Tikander, because of his good relationships with members of Finnish Intelligence, would have been able to have Häyhänen on his radar.

A closer look at the real person whom Häyhänen would assume as his own identity to enter the United States, Eugene Nicolai Mäki, we find that Maki been born in the United States (Idaho) and with his Karilian Finn family re-immigrated back to the Soviet Union in 1928 via an organization that Wilho Tikander's family had been deeply involved with (another reason that Tikander would have known about the real Maki and would have been, perhaps, able to identify Häyhänen as an imposter very early on when Häyhänen first entered into the US around 1952. In 1957 Maki/Häyhänen would defect to the United States and help to identify U.S. Army Sergeant, Roy Rhodes (code name "Quebec"). Rhodes arrest would lead to the capture of Rudolf Abel (Vilyam (Willie) Genrikhovich (August) Fisher), the leader of perhaps the largest Soviet spy ring operating in the United States.

By early 1958 Fisher/Able had been tried and convicted in the United States of espionage but his appeals lasted until March of 1960. This enless series of trials and appeals kept the work of Maki/Häyhänen in the news as well.

It is Tikanders references to an agent from the 1940's who was in Finland that was still in the news at the time of these June 1959 meetings that leads me to believe that Häyhänen may be the person refered to. Tikander also suggests that this persons more recent activities had created a difficult position for US Intelligence. If one takes a closer look at the intelligence that had come out of the Venona materials, we find that many people from the Abel organization had been compromised by that information yet Abel never was. By 1959 Rudolf Abel was a convicted spy based on the information provided by Häyhänen.

These speculations of mine come full circle when we look at the defection of Oswald to the Soviet Union (remembering that Walker publicly stated in later life that it was his belief that Oswald was working for both Soviet and American intelligence). And as you know we have put together information that proves that Walker and Oswald could have been on the same plane as Oswald made his way toward Helsinki in October of 1959. Just over a month after Able/Fisher's last court appeal a US Spy plane is downed over the Soviet Union. On February 10, 1962, Rudolf Abel was exchanged for Central Intelligence Agency U-2 pilot Gary Powers. Is all this just a series of coincidences? Perhaps.

How much did Tikander know? Was the return of Abel to the Soviet Union an important mission that required the downing of a U-2 spy craft to achieve? There something here that bugs me but I can't put my finger on it. Why can people tied so closely to John B. Hurt and the information he deciphered be so easily linked to the activities and even the defection of Lee Harvey Oswald to the Soviet Union?

And why can all these people be tied to John J. McCloy?

Jim Root

Since my last post on this thread seems to have been some five years ago i feel I should at least update some of my research and thoughts.

1)During the Warren Commission days attorneys/investigators looking into the Silvia Odio incident speculated that "if" Oswald were with the men who visited Silvia Odio then those men may have provided a "cut-out" phone number for Oswald to use if it were necessary. I find it interesting to read that these investigators, who, I assume, were unaware of the "Raliegh Call" would consider the possibility that Oswald would have had a phone number of for a "cut out."

2)The Edwin Walker papers suggest that Walker was most interested in the Silvia Odio incident.....and made, it seems, more notes about the Warren Commissions work on this incident than any other portion of the Warren Commission materials.

3)Unlike Oswald's repeated attempts to contact Jonathan Abt, Oswald only made one attempt to contact "John Hurt." This suggest to me that Oswald was attempting to pass information to a "cut out." My research followed a line that would look for a person in the Raleigh area who would recognize the name John Hurt and would know to immediately pass the information along to people higher on the "food chain."

4)John B. Hurt was intrumental in translating the information that led to Operation Stella Polaris (which led to the Venona Secret) and the man that approved that operation at the end of WWII was in Raleigh, North Carolina.

5) Frank Rowlett and Meridith Gardner, the two men who would be tasked by the Warren Commission via the CIA via the NSA to investigate Lee Harvey Oswald for intelligence contacts, would both be close associates of John B. Hurt. Both Gardner and Rowlett were also the major NSA players in the Venona Secret materials.

6) In June of 1959 Richard Helms would be meeting with the same group of former OSS/Secret Intelligence operatives that were responsible for Operation Stella Polaris at the end of WWII. These meetings were coordinated by the same man who lived in Raleign, North Carolina. During these meetings Wilho Tikander (former OSS Station Chief in Stockholm during WWII speculated that an off the record intelligence operation was about to be launched by Richard Helms boys and would be conducted via Helsinki, Finland. Participating in these meeting was Whitney Shepardson who is closely linked to John J. McCloy and Demitri De Mohrenschildt (brother of George De M). Within four months Lee Harvey Oswald would enter the Soviet Union via Helsinki, Finland and in 1964 Richard Helms would be the CIA laison to the Warren Commission.

Thoughts:

It is my speculation that the Raleign Call was made by Oswald after he had suggested to his brother that he had contacts in high places.

I further speculate that Oswald may have been led to believe that if he made a person to person call to someone named John Hurt it would start the ball rolling to gather the help that he so desperately needed for the prediciment that he was in.

Oswald would have no idea of who John Hurt was or that John B. Hurt was associated with what was, at the time, one of the most closely guarded secrets of the United States (the Venona Project) during the Cold War.

If Lee Harvey Oswald had been provided with that name only a person at the highest levels of intelligence would have known what kaos would be created within the intelligence community when it was discovered that the accused assassin of the President of the United States had attempted to contact a person involved in the highest levels of intelligence.

The possibility that both Rowlett and Gardner, close associates of John B. Hurt, would be the ones selected to investigate Oswald for intelligence contacts is to much of a coincidence to overlook without further investigation (which I have done).

Hope these words generate additional thoughts

Jim Root

Robert

Frank Rowlett died June 29, 1998. He was involved in the writting of the report on Lee Harvey Oswald's potential intelligence connections for the Warren Commission in 1964.

Jim Root

Robert

Just to add a few pieces that I have collected over the past several decades:

Yardley, for some reason was close enough to John "Frenchy" Grombach to have a Grombach book dedicated to him. Harrod Miller seems to have served with Grombach in central America cica 1930's. Grombach, along with McCloy associate Whitney Shepardson, were the leaders of the Secret Intelligence operations during WW II that were originally organized by John J. McCloy in his role as Asst. Sec. of Defence. Working with and around all of them is Richard Helms and all seem to be associated with Stella Polaris.

Now this is where I believe we should be looking not at the coincidence that these people are all associated together but rather the fact that their association would concern the actual security of the United States, a guarentee that there association to one Lee Harvey Oswald would never be revealed.

Jim Root

Greg

Thank you for the info...

Jim Root