Robert Howard

The most disappointing item about the book in retrospect might be in regards to the topic of a section in John Newman's - Oswald and The CIA pages 61-67 entitled The Case of the Two Priscillas, which was also the subject of a recent post by Tom Scully concerning discrepancies regarding Priscilla McMillan Johnson in regards to her file, more or less two Priscilla McMillan's? Newman explains that F. Trubee Davidson and Cord Meyer were speculated by Ms. McMillan as "waiting for me to grow up, so they could recruit me...[for CIA.] In Meyer's tome, there is nary a word about Priscilla McMillan Johnson. For more see John Newman - Oswald and The CIA pages 61-67 entitled The Case of the Two Priscillas and the post by Tom Scully

Yeah, I have a thing or two to add but the reason I wanted to make another post is that I need to make a correction to the date Webster returned to the United States; Amidst all of the materials I was looking at today probably in a book, I had read Webster returned to the United States in January 1964. That would be incorrect. Some researchers may be familiar with the Washington Post Saturday June 9, 1962 issue with the headline: THIRD AMERICAN IN 2 MONTHS LEAVES SOVIET 'HOME https://www.maryferr....do?docId=79701 below is an excerpt.... Oswald is the third American in less than two months to return home after planning to settle in the Soviet Union. Robert E. Webster of Zelienople, Pa., who gave up his citizenship, left for the United States as an immigrant last month. David Johnson, a Philadelphia railroad worker, and his wife and twin sons returned after becoming disillusioned in one week with the Soviet Union. Hey, if Webster is my candidate for the Oswald impostor, I have to correct the impression he was in the USSR in early October 1963, [Mexico City] especially if he wasn't. There were five defectors, mentioned in my earlier post......Two of them had a connection to service in the military in Germany. Sloboda and Dutkanicz. Specifically, they were both in Army Intelligence, both had defected within days of each other, and both had been recruited by the KGB before their defections. See pgs. 184-186 Oswald and The CIA - John Newman. I think in the threads about CUSA and General Walker National Zietung, et cetera the aforementioned usually is not mentioned. Just in case anyone is keeping track....

Oh hell Lee, don't sell yourself short, they're more than interesting. I have been following them with considerable interest, Pugibet.... the guy is definitely a 'cog in the old wheel,' to say the least. The Stoneleigh Hotel is also more than just the usual, it's just that for me all you can glean is that it was 'a popular place for JFK related figures to meet'.....maybe I am missing something. The Sheraton Hotel is another, Oswald is seen with D. A. Phillips there as Veciana is entering.....would make a nice scene in a movie. Getting back to Pugibet.... The question I keep asking myself is did Pugibet have a connection with Jean Souetre, or any of that crowd? One wonders.... I don't know if you're interested but here is an article that describes the untimely demise of some of the players from that whole era, I was going to post it on the Pugibet thread, but what the heck..... Regarding Robert E. Webster, I just think he is the perfect candidate, his description is roughly the same, and since he was one of the core group of defectors [Webster, Oswald, Sloboda, Dutkanicz, Ricciardelli] he would have been vulnerable to being blackmailed, as Oswald also was into doing something he might be reluctant to do. In Oswald's case, and this is just for the sake of argument, he could have been blackmailed by Hosty into informing for the FBI, by threatening to make "visits to your place of employment," as the proverbial hammer. Webster could have, if I am correct, not even known why he was being asked to go to the Embassy and say "I am trying to go to obtain a visa"...but in overall response to your question, it is just my opinion, and I cannot offer a laundry list of proof, it is more of a hunch. October 29, 1972 World Drug Ring Reported Cracked PARIS (UPI) - President Nixon’s top narcotics agent, Nelson Gross, said Saturday police around the world have smashed a multi-million dollar drugs network called the “Latin American connection,” which supplied almost a third of the U.S. heroin consumption. He said the previously un-announced crackdown, which involved the killing of a top leader, had resulted in a dramatic shortage of heroin on the American eastern seaboard and a steep rise in the price of narcotics. “The conspiracy accounted for almost a third of the annual U.S. consumption of heroin,” Gross said. “By breaking this underworld ring, police have dealt the Latin-American connection a deadly blow from which it might never recover.” Gross, who is senior adviser and coordinator for international narcotics matters in the United States told newsmen the connection started in Marseille in Southern France. Drugs were ferried from there by plane, boat and auto to South America, where they were moved across the Mexican border into the United States. “This was a cooperative effort involving the French and American police and anti-narcotics agencies from other countries,” Gross said. He said he called on Interior Minister Raymond Marcellin Friday to convey the American Government’s thanks for France’s part in smashing the network. Describing the police crackdown “as a story that has not been told before.” Gross said it involved the killing of one top smuggler, the arrests of the alleged ringleader and six of his chief aides and the detention of 32 lower rank traffickers. He said this action followed: Paul Karamian was extradited to the United States where he is awaiting trial. Lucian Sarti, wanted in France on murder charges, was killed in a shootout with police in Mexico Jean Paul Angeletti, also wanted in France on murder charges, was extradited to France where he is wanted on murder charges. Renzo Rogai, wanted by Italian police was extradited to Italy. Joseph Sereni was arrested in Venezuela with 35 pounds of heroin. Frances Chiapi, an alleged murderer and 32 traffickers were arrested in Argentina and 99 pounds of heroin confiscated. Christian David, wanted in France on murder charges was arrested in Rio de Janeiro, when 60 kilos of heroin were found in a boat. On Aug, 8, August Ricord, alleged leader of the network, was arrested in Paraguay and extradited to New York, where he is in jail. (Antoni Guerini another Marseille mob figure, had died in 1967] Years later, Nelson Gross himself would have a brush with destiny not terribly unlike the persons he was speaking of in the above press release, as his obituary clearly shows...... NELSON GROSS , WEALTHY GOP STRATEGIST South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, FL) - September 27, 1997 A generation ago, Nelson Gross reigned as a bold power broker and crafty political strategist in New Jersey's Republican Party. He helped steer the 1968 presidential nomination to Richard Nixon and a year later managed William Cahill's successful campaign for governor. But his political fame and authority fell as rapidly as they had soared. In 1974, Mr. Gross was convicted on federal charges relating to campaign financing and served six months in prison He then abandoned politics, retreating to his native Bergen County and living far from the spotlight. He managed a small real estate business and operated the Binghamton Ferryboat, a riverfront restaurant in Edgewater, N.J., on an old Hudson River ferryboat that he and a friend, James Demetrakis, converted in 1975. Last Wednesday morning, Mr. Gross vanished after withdrawing $20,000 from a bank near the restaurant and his law office. He was last seen driving with two men in his 1990 grey BMW sedan. His body was found on Wednesday on the east bank of the Hudson River. For the past 20 years, Mr. Gross saw little of old political friends as he and his wife, Noel, lived quietly and comfortably in homes in Saddle River, N.J.; Bridgehampton, N.Y., and Palm Beach. He maintained an athlete's trim, which dated from his teen-age days as an all-county tackle on Teaneck High School's football team, by jogging regularly and playing golf. Golfing friends say he belonged to the Atlantic Golf Club in Bridgehampton and to the Medalist Golf Club in Hobe Sound. Days before he vanished, acquaintances said, Mr. Gross had returned in good spirits from a golfing vacation in Scotland. Although Mr. Gross had long forsaken politics, Noel Gross remained active in the party. She is now chairwoman of the New Jersey Racing Commission. Nelson Gerard Gross was born on Jan. 9, 1932, and grew up in Bergen County, his eventual political power base. After graduating from Yale University and Columbia Law School, he joined the Englewood law firm run by his father, Albert. He served briefly as an assistant U.S. attorney and quickly became active in Bergen County's Republican Party as a protege of the county chairman, Walter Jones. He was elected to a term in the state Assembly in 1961 at age 29 and five years later engineered a coup to replace Jones. Mr. Gross, strong-willed and disciplined, quickly built himself into a force in the state Republican Party. In addition to his wife, he is survived by a son, Neil, of Saddle River; his father, Albert, of West Palm Beach, and two brothers, Paul and Michael, both of Hillsdale, N.J. Ahh, the Nixon Administration......those were the good old days, eh.....

Cord Meyer's book is probably something of an anachronism after all these years. It is a lot like other books written by former intelligence officers, in that anything to do with the Kennedy Assassination just follows the script, with at best a this is what I was doing that day, type of thing. No mention of how I felt regarding 'extra-marital activities, and so forth. Definitely no smoking guns.....I don't want to brag but.....[lol] my collection of memoirs of key people isn't shabby at all. The view from my perspective is they all follow the script, Oswald did it, we were looking for a conspiracy, but all we found were possibilities the Russian's, Cuban's, Mafia....ad infinitum were behind it.....later to be repeated by the HSCA and Blakey. LBJ, of course, is the ultimate qui bono, but it was mainly E Howard Hunt's American Spy that gave that momentum....Obviously I am speaking only of governmental in the context of key Kennedy Administration persons. It might shock some to know that in all the memoirs of key government or high ranking intelligence people, that I've read, the most damning was I believe Arthur Schlesinger Jr's' description of Adlai Stevenson's reaction to JFK 's death, it seemed to borderline on scandalous as far as AS Jr. was concerned. And it is pretty obvious, at least to me Adlai Stevenson was not a conspirator. I suppose that is the point I am trying to make, these guys do not p _ _ _ off their constituents. About the only high ranking intel agent that did that was when Dave Phillips wrote the Night Watch, there are some commentaries in some documents about how he revealed more details about black ops than he really needed to....

After a couple of decades of researching the JFK assassination, I am personally of the belief that Robert E. Webster was the Mexico City mystery man. I cannot prove it, and according to the documents he was still in the Soviet Union, not to return to the United States until January 1964. So like a lot of topics, consensus, does not even enter the equation; it is just my opinion. But I suppose I am fortunate, I don't have enough of a reputation to tarnish in the first place......lol If there is any interest see CD 340 and the oswaldsmother.blogspot, which has one of the few photos of Webster on the net. I don't know whom runs the website, but I have to think they are good, at today's first glance Cheers

The subject of this biography was the eldest of their children; (James S. Hallett) Timothy, the second, is a prominent citizen of Galena; Bartlett died several years since at Mount Carroll; Lucy is the wife of Samuel Snyder, of Lena, Illinois; and Moses is Judge of the United States District Court of Colorado, at Denver And, Robert, need I remind you, that even when important links between relevant individuals are firmly established, almost no one here takes any interest, but post a photo of the back of a designated (unidentifiable) suspicious figure's head, or of a hopelessly blurred blob, and they are all over it in an enthusiastic frenzy? Let's not forget 100 pages of Oswald in the Doorway...... ( Garry Coit, CIA case officer of Priscilla Johnson and fraternity brother and fraternity housemate of Thomas Devine.) Yes, Tom I read that and it is very impressive, your genealogy skills leave me in the dirt. I've been at this for some time, and I still can't quite come to a resolution on the Dopplegangers/Dual Identities phenomena; It seems obvious there was an attempt to confuse the issue in that regard. But in hindsight, its hard to imagine the adding in of so many same names, too many to reference here. I believe that part of it is just a coincidence, when you consider the sheer amount of names in the JFK saga. I won't post the quote, because it would be redundant, but every time I see a reference to Shreveport, I think about the quote attributed to Sherman Kent in Bruce Campbell Adamson's DeMohrenschildt books, about not being aware of certain goings on there before the assassination of President Kennedy. Before it is all over I believe certain facts will emerge about the assassination there.

I've noticed a couple of things which may or may not be pertinent. When Marguerite Oswald traveled to Washington at the time of the Warren Commission Hearings, a Secret Service agent flew on the plane with her, he was J.J. Hallett. see excerpt below Oswald's Mother Flies to Capital by Kent Biffle page 1, Dallas Morning News February 10, 1964 Mrs. Marguerite Oswald- one of the few persons who don’t believe her son killed President Kennedy- left for Washington Sunday night....... Forrest Sorrels, Special Agent in Charge of the Dallas Secret Service office- supervised as Mrs. Oswald boarded the plane. One agent identified as J. J. Hallett, accompanied her on the flight......... There was also a Mr. and Mrs. H. P. Hallett, 3248 Hanover, Dallas, Texas circa 1965 probably before, who are listed in a couple of articles flying to Japan and elsewhere, may be a dead end especially if there is no familial relationship with Oliver Hallett, although there was a Mrs. Leslie who lived on Hanover, and spoke Russian with Marina Oswald. LESLIE, HELEN (MRS.) Sources: WC Vol 8, p. 469; WC Vol 26, p. 760; CE 3116 Mary's Comments: Her daughter is Natalia Krassokova. Mrs. Leslie and her stepdaughter live on Hanover in 1964. She speaks Russian and knows George deMohrenschildt well. She also met LHO. https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/marysdb/showRec.do?id=5810 LESLIE, WARREN ----- Sources: WC Vol 23, p. 634; CE 1862; CD 932, p. 3 Mary's Comments: Neiman-Marcus public relations Vice President who moved to New York. Yaeko Okui lived in the Leslie's Dallas home in the spring of 1963. https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/marysdb/showRec.do?id=5810 Last is an obituary below from Dallas, seems like a possibility. I included Oliver Hallett's obit for convenience sake. Ex-navy Capt. Oliver Hallett Supervised Great Lakes Recruits October 31, 1992|By Kenan Heise. Oliver Sawyer Hallett, 68, a retired captain in the Navy, was the commanding officer in charge of recruits at Great Lakes Naval Base in the early 1970s, then the largest naval training command in the country. A resident of Hinsdale for the last 10 years, he died Friday at home. ``He really cared about people,`` his daughter-in-law, Jackie Lustig, said. ``He was very intelligent and had integrity. A lot of people are going to remember him.`` Capt. Hallett, who was born in Denver, graduated from Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., and from the U.S. Naval Academy. He served in the submarine command and received the Legion of Merit, the highest non-combat medal awarded by the Navy. Capt. Hallett was a White House naval assistant in the terms of Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. He also served in diplomatic assignments in the former Soviet Union and in the Federal Republic of Germany. When he was at Great Lakes, his command included 300 officers and 15,000 recruits. He was there from 1972 until he retired in 1975. Survivors include his wife, Joan; a son, Christopher; two daughters, Carolyn Maginnis and Polly Kawalek; five grandchildren; a brother; and a sister. Mass for Capt. Hallett will be said at 10 a.m. Monday in St. Isaac Jogues Catholic Church, 5th and Clay Streets, Hinsdale. http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1992-10-31/news/9204080691_1_naval-academy-command-recruits New York Times, The (NY) - August 18, 1987 Dallas Morning News, The (TX) - August 20, 2008 Deceased Name: Hallett , Barbara Hallett, Barbara Barbara Ester HALLETT, 96 yrs., died at Renaissance Hospital Dallas Texas, 18 AUG 2008. Born in Coronation, (Kilburn), New Brunswick, Canada. She moved to the U.S.A in 1929 and became an American Citizen. She worked for many years at the VOUGHT Air Craft Manufacturing Company as a secretary. She was the last surviving member of her immediate family having been predeceased by her father & Mother: Emery Austin - HALLETT, (1937) & Ester Elizabeth (JACKSON), (1939). She was also predeceased by her brother Cecil HALLETT, (1952) and sisters: Olga BISHOP, (1966) Mabel SMITH, (1976) and Alice HILL, (1987). Barbara never married but was loved and cherished by many Nieces & Nephews, & Grand Nieces & Nephews. She loved her family, was kind and generous to all and had a special love of animals. She will be lovingly remembered and greatly missed. Dallas Laurel Land 214-371-1336 laurellandfuneralhome.com

There is a definite addendum to the whole conundrum regarding the aftermath of The Kennedy Detail, just a day or so ago, I perused the book for the very first time. While I could go on and on about the tenor of the book, which is written in the style of "anyone who thinks the Secret Service was involved in any kind of conspiracy, needs their head examined," I will just state that while I have a tremendous amount of sympathy for Clint Hill and other agents who were truly dedicated to protecting the President, my approach is when you read this book, have everything written by Vince Palamara within reach; you will need it. Along those lines, the first thing about the book that struck a warning sign was the fact that Robert A. Steuart does not appear in the index, and if he is mentioned in the book at all, I would be surprised. For those who don't know who Robert A. Steuart was, please read on. He is featured in the thread on Jack Martin 1:42 PM See http://educationforu...?showtopic=5989 So the question for myself was, why would a book designed to tell the full story about the details of the Secret Service protection of President Kennedy with a tight focus regarding Dallas on 11/22/63 just bypass any mention of the man who was a fairly prominent member of the Secret Service in Dallas, Texas? I believe I answered my own question. Dallas Morning News, page 3 January 6, 1966 Secret Service Steuart Retires as Agent After 32 years of colorful service as a Secret Service agent, Robert A. Steuart, who helped crack the Dallas Red Fox forgery ring that sent 26 to prison, announced his retirement Wednesday. Steuart was assistant special agent in charge of the Dallas district under Forrest V. Sorrels. During his years of service, he had two special assignments to Puerto Rico, was body guard to Mme Chiang-Kai-shek, and with Fort Worth police broke up a large counterfeiting ring, seizing plates and about $40,000 in spurious $20 notes. But most notable was his work in 1958, together with that of postal inspectors, in cracking the Red Fox gang, that stole, forged and passed thousands of dollars in government checks. The gang had rubber stamps made to raise the amounts on checks stolen from Dallas mail boxes. Some of the mob would steal the checks, others would forge them and still others would pass them. During World War II, Steuart served with Army Intelligence in the Eighth Service Command He tracked down an employee that had been writing threatening letters to the commanding general and worked with balloons launched in Japan that carried incendiary or anti-personnel bombs, some of which landed in Texas. Steuart joined the Secret Service in St. Louis in 1933. He worked in Cincinatti, Richmond, Va., Memphis and Los Angeles prior to coming to the Dallas office in 1957. Steuart said he had no immediate plans for the future, but expects to make his home in Dallas. Dallas Morning News, The (TX) - August 21, 2005 STEUART,, KATHERINE LUCILE (JONAS) 94, a resident of Dallas for the past 60 years went to be with our Lord on August 16, 2005. She was born on January 21, 1911 in Salem, West Virginia. Katherine graduated from what was then known as Salem High School in 1929. She then attended Salem College for 2 years. In the winter of 1945, Katherine was employed by Western Union Telegraph Company as a clerk operator and office manager. She then moved to Dallas in the Summer of 1945 with her son Norman to reunite the family with her husband James who had relocated here to accept a job in the defense industry. Katherine continued to work for Western Union Telegraph Company until her retirement in 1972. Katherine was a devout Christian and member of Oak Lawn United Methodist Church for 60 years. She belonged to the Lillian Tate Class and volunteered for many church activities as well as a volunteer for the Visiting Nurse Association. She is preceded in death by her husband James C. Jonas who was employed by Braniff International Airlines for 37 years; she later married Robert A. Steuart, who was employed for approximately 20 years as a Secret Service Officer; parents, Rex and Mary McQuaid; sister, Helen Hutson; brothers, Joe McQuaid and Lynn McQuaid. Katherine is survived by her only son, Norman M. Jonas and wife Elizabeth of Dallas, TX; sisters, June Usher of Monterey, CA, Frances Stutler of Belpre, OH and Alice Hopkins of Zephyrhills, FL; brother, William McQuaid of Salem, WV; several nieces and nephews and a host of friends. She will truly be missed by those who knew her and whom she touched in her special caring way. Services will be 10:00AM, Tuesday, August 23, 2005 at Oak Lawn United Methodist Church, 3014 Oak Lawn Ave., Dallas, TX 75219, Rev. Michael A House officiating. Interment to follow at Restland Memorial Park. Family will receive friends from 6:00PM until 8:00PM, Monday, August 22, 2005 at Restland Funeral Home. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to the American Cancer Society, 8900 Carpenter Fwy, Dallas, TX 75247. Honorary pallbearers will be her long time associates from Western Union Telegraph Company, J.A. Summers, Herbert B. Bays, R.D. Reding, Lowell D. Gaston and long time friends Dr. Ed Crow Miller and Jim Strunk. Pallbearers are Rev. Michael A. House with remaining to be decided. Restland 972-238-7111 restlandfuneralhome.com OB6 Obituaries, Notices I would like to know who the General was whom Steuart was investigating, ie the person who was sending the General threatening letters, if I were a betting man, I would think he would be somebody we have all heard of. Regarding Robert A. Steuart, I haven't been able to find an obit, but I haven't found any indication he is still alive. I can't speak for anyone else, but this presents another unanswered question, primarily regarding the personal political views of Robert A. Steuart and whether they were a factor on the day JFK was assassinated.

Daniel wrote..."Robert, thanks so much for that link. You and Ecker have got kind of a dry sense of humor, don'tcha. I guess you thought it would be funny if someone went through all 418 pages; that would be crazy...." Perks to you Daniel, for going to all that trouble; I know one thing you gained, and that is you know as much about that document as anybody, no sarcasm intended. I suppose it is minutiae, but John Armstrong wrote a blurb in Harvey & Lee or elsewhere about locating source documents personally instead of relying on what is written or attested to by someone else. Good work.....

I certainly believe the article below is pertinent to the discussion. Dallas Morning News, page 7 January 9, 1963 Dallas Group Forms New Petrochemical Company Formation of Premier Petrochemical Co., with Dallas headquarters, to build a $4,000,000 plus plant on the Houston ship channel was announced here Tuesday. Joining in the announcement was A.H. Meadows, General American Oil Co., chairman who will be chairman of Premier Petrochemical. General Americ -an will hold 25 per cent of the firms stock and provide three of its directors. The plant will produce 70,000 tons annually of prilled urea, including both fertilizer and feed grade. Location will be near Pasadena, close by to Phillips Chemical Co.’s ammonia plant, which will supply feedstock. The Phillips organization will also market the Premier product. Work is to start on the plant within 60 days with operation scheduled by January, 1964. President of Premier will be Sylvester Dayson, who joined Meadows in the formal announcement. Dayson was president of Premier Oil Refining Co, at Longview prior to its sale several years ago and since has been active as an individual in the petroleum business. There is no financial connection between the Premier Petrochemical and Premier Oil Refining, which now is owned by Western Natural Gas Co., Houston. Other Premier Petrochemical Stockholders are these Dallas men. Lewis W. MacNaughton, DeGolyer and MacNaughton senior chairman; Roland S. Bond and R. H. Venable, independent oilmen D. Harold Byrd, president of Byrd Enterprises and Frederick R. Mayer, president of Exeter Drilling Co.,Other stockholders are these Tyler men: Joe Zeppa, Delta Drilling Co., president, D.G. Byars and Watson Wise, independents. J.R. Rogerson, formerly Monsanto Chemical Co., vice- president at El Dorado Ark. will be executive vice-president. He will headquarter in Houston. Edward Kliewer, Jr., Dallas attorney, will be secretary and general counsel The announcement stated financing for the new company will be arranged through the First National Bank in Dallas.

There are other passages from General Cooper's book that warrant attention. At least you Bill, I would think so. In fact the entire section from pages 119-124, are in my estimation. Tell me if I am correct. from page 120 He told me I had been nominated to be the aide to Admiral Smith CINCLANT/CINCLANFLT in Norfolk but Admiral Smith had unexpectedly decided to retire. I wouldn’t be the aide to the new admiral, because someone else had taken that billet. The detailer asked me to "hang loose." It seemed that something else wasin the wind, but he didn’t say what............... ...........The day before I reported to Admiral McDonald for work in the Pentagon, I checked in with my parent unit at Headquarters Marine Corps. At that time General David M Shoup was Commandant of the Marine Corps. His Chief of Staff was Lieutenant General Wallace Greene, who had left instructions for me to report to him. General Greene spent almost an hour with me and impressed me with the fact that I was being sent over to some “fop” job in the Pentagon. First, in the strictest confidence he explained to me that General Shoup had been totally at odds with the Navy senior leadership since early in his term, three and a half years ago when he learned that Admiral Arleigh Burke had been recording a very personal, sensitive, private discussion they were having in his office. After Burke’s departure, things had not gone much better with his successor, Admiral Anderson. Shoup was feisty anyway and difficult to work with, but Admiral Greene told me that he personally hoped to improve this communication gap by working more closely with Admiral McDonald. These are my observations. President Eisenhower had appointed General Shoup to be Commandant when he was a middle-grade major general, passing over all of the Corps senior leadership. Ike was looking for an “independent thinker,” and he found one in Shoup. Shoup also became close to John F. Kennedy, while he was President. Shoup ran the Marine Corps with a handful of his generals and treated the rest of the Corp’s generals with contempt. He did not trust the Navy, and felt that the admirals in charge took his loyalty for granted. General Greene wanted me to understand the undercurrents I’d be swimming in. He charged me with giving the CNO my very best, and added that whether things worked out with the CNO or not (some people fire aides almost on a whim) I had a good record and the Marine Corps would take care of me. His final remark was: “Your loyalty is to your boss, but you can serve the Corp’s well by being the best Marine aide he could ever have.” A few months later, General Greene who had graduated from the Naval Academy a few years behind Admiral McDonald, became Commandant of the Marine Corps. Dispite some disagreements, he and the CNO maintained an open and continuous dialog during my tour. I was happy to become a somewhat unusual conduit for this relationship. from page 124 Midshipman Second Class Roger Staubach and his band of brave football warriors took Navy football to great heights in 1963. The team ended the regular season with a 9-1 record and played Texas in the Cotton Bowl in what was called as national championship game. Both teams were being touted as number one. The CNO had been monitoring the season very closely, assisted by his Marine aide. The season gave us an unusual opportunity to make some of the key games communication vehicles for both Congressional and Defense officials. The admiral, although not a dyed-in-the-wool sports enthusiast accepted the invitations he received and attended all of the home games and several of the away games, mainly those at schools that had prestigous NROTC units — schools such as Michigan, Notre Dame and Duke. For the October 5th game against Michigan, he invited House Majority Leader Ford and his two young sons to travel with him. Gerald Ford, a former Michigan center, proved to be as amiable and low key as he has always been portrayed. The school and its NROTC authorities welcomed the visit. Navy impressed the nation with a resounding 26-13 triumph over a good Michigan team. Congressman Ford, who turned out to be a neighbor of mine in Alexandria, was a good sport over Michigan’s loss.

Tom aka Lifesaver....Thanks with what you furnished, I was sort of, able to piece together page 93 of Brush With History .....main spokesman for the Cult Awareness Network involved with litigation against the Church of Scientology among others. He was a friend of Aldous Huxley and also served the defense team of Patty Hearst............77 straight days. The fact that Louis J West is listed as one of the researchers in this sinister project raises many questions with regard to Jack Ruby. If he was studying Ruby why haven't any of these...... Of course, Aldous Huxley died on November 22, 1963 also..... There are several areas Buddy Walthers interfaces with.....3126 Harlandale, I was incorrect in an earlier post on this thread when I mentioned T-2 was his mother, in fact, if I am not mistaken it was his mother-in-law who was T-2 at the time of the alleged Oswald visit to that address.....There was a reason, obviously that I asked the question you answered Tom, if you like I can fill you in, if you are interested. also see https://groups.googl...jfk/0-L2aI60wvA and The Truth About Scientology Trevor Meldal-Johnsen and Patrick Lusey -Tempo Books -1980 Final Note: I was interested in the topic, originally after I had done a lot of research on ONI, as have some other persons. As part of my leave no stone unturned approach, if you are interested in the US Navy from pre-World War II to the JFK Assassination, at some point it behooves one to take a look at L. Ron Hubbard, aka the founder of Scientology as well as the driving force behind Dianetics. My outlook on Scientology is not conspiracy driven, but I am also interested in history especially controversial history, what I learned about Scientology in the context of 1950 onwards to about 1980, would not be unfavorable, in fact if appearances are correct, which, of course oftentimes they are not, they have taken on some pretty powerful groups both within and without the U.S. government. But I don't want to get off the subject matter.

The only reason I am updating this thread, is in hopes that someone can answer a question. In Tagg's biography of E.R. Buddy Walthers, there is a passage that reads...... .....main spokesman for the Cult Awareness Network involved with litigation against the Church of Scientology among others. He was a friend of Aldous Huxley and also served the defense team of Patty Hearst..... Brush With History page 93, by Walthers, E.R. (1998) Could someone with the book tell me who the person is being referenced?

The italicized portion below is from Daniel Wayne Dunn's last post. There is another unanswered question that has bedeviled me. In April of 1963, Lee Oswald took shots at General Edwin Walker in Dallas. Walker believed to his dying day that the Department of Justice sent word to the Dallas police not to pursue Oswald "for reasons of state." The relevant police file, #F48156, is missing from the Dallas police files, like the 1963 appointment book of Robert Kennedy. By the mid 1970s, the FBI was still instructing Dallas police Chief Jesse Curry to remain silent about the "handling" of the Oswald evidence. Dutifully, Curry denied he had ever heard of Oswald before the assassination. The missing document purportedly connects Oswald with his own assassin, Jack Ruby, an association made to seem outlandish by the Warren Commission, except that I discovered for A Farewell to Justice that Ruby and Oswald were very well known to each other. Robert: There have been, over the years a large number of circumstances where, a document has been alleged by a researcher to be missing, destroyed or whatnot. In a few of these situations the allegation while sincerely stated, has later proved to be erroneous. The most recent case being a Secret Service Report regarding the Tampa, Florida Secret Service report regarding JFK, that was thought to have been destroyed or missing when in fact, Bill Kelly discovered that was not the case. It may be of some interest to some to know that page 20 of Warren CD 81.1 has an identical number “#F48156.” Page 20, deals with William “Bill” Duff and his connection to the Walker shooting, and the page itself does not seem to address the question being referenced. You also might notice Agent Hostie sic Hosty is mentioned. Still, considering the document is some 418 pages, those who are “detail oriented,” might be well-advised to go through the document just to make sure it is indeed “missing.” See Commission Document 81.1 - AG Texas https://www.maryferr...84&relPageId=20

I certainly don't claim to have a definitive answer but I sure have discovered something interesting regarding a possible overlooked item, and one in which, if there was a genealogical connection would raise some eyebrows and more than likely vindicate Dick Russell's research as well as a researcher who is not exactly a household name, the author of The Kennedy Assassination Cover-up, named Donald Gibson. My interest in Pearl Harbor started long before I was a JFK researcher, when I read The Man Who Knew Too Much, it was obvious to me that there was much still to be learned about Pearl Harbor and any linkage to the Kennedy Assassination. And then came along the Raleigh Call and John B Hurt. What I personally discovered, was that a very compelling individual was the lead investigator in the various Pearl Harbor investigations. He was Henry Christian Clausen. I read his book on his involvement in the Pearl Harbor Hearings, from cover to cover, there was nothing to indicate he was any different from any other person who heads a governmental investigation into a controversial subject, with two exceptions. The guilt of Admiral Short and General Husband Kimmel seemed a little unfair considering the intelligence briefings they had been given focused more on the possibility of sabotage by the Nisei in Hawaii, a very racist slant, I might add, the Nisei distinguished themselves not just on December 7, 1941, but all through the war and accepted their imprisonment in what were at best detention camps with a great deal of stoicism, and never acted as the potential saboteurs they had been painted as by the government at any time. Worse, the rather public crucifixion of Admiral Kimmel and General Short, were not unlike the case of Sacco and Venzetti. But what struck me as hard to swallow was a fact that is noted in Henry Clausen's obituary printed below. Henry Christian Clausen A funeral will be held Wednesday for Henry Christian Clausen, a lawyer who was a major figure in California and U.S. Scottish Rite Freemasonry. He died yesterday in San Francisco at age 87. Mr. Clausen was born in San Francisco and earned a law degree at the University of San Francisco in 1927, with admission to the bar that year. He continued his studies at the University of California and the University of Michigan. In 1935, he married Virginia Palmer. During the building of the Golden Gate Bridge, he served as chief counsel for Joseph B. Strauss, the engineer responsible for the project. He was assigned to the Army Judge Advocate General's Office during World War II, acting as special counsel in the military investigation of the disaster at Pearl Harbor. Mr. Clausen attained the 33rd degree in Freemasonry and wrote several notable books on Masonic themes, including ''Clausen's Commentaries on Morals and Dogma,'' which first appeared in 1974 and which has gone into seven printings. In 1955, he was grand master of the California Masons at the ground breaking for the city's Masonic temple and auditorium. From 1969 to 1985, he was sovereign grand commander of the Supreme Council, Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, with responsibility for the activities of 4 million Masons in the United States, and was editor of their monthly magazine, The New Age. He is survived by his wife; his sons, Donald and Henry Jr.; and his daughters, Florian Elliott and Karen Freemen. Friends may call Tuesday at Halsted N. Gray-Carew & English, 1123 Sutter Street. The funeral will be at Masonic Auditorium, 1111 California Street, at 1 p.m. Wednesday. Contributions are recommended for the California Scottish Rite Foundation, 855 Elm Avenue, Long Beach 90813. San Francisco Chronicle (CA) Date: December 5, 1992 Edition: FINAL Page: C10 Record Number: 14090 Copyright © 1992 The Chronicle Publishing Co. Of course, nowadays it is politically incorrect to cast aspersions upon Freemasonry, but the idea that Clausen was also a 33rd degree Freemason didn't exactly make me feel warm and bubbly about his commitment to find the truth wherever it led. I will leave it at that. There is one rather strange aspect of the Sorge Affair which makes me scratch my head regarding the name Clausen. An excerpt from a lucid account of the Sorge Affair...... .....One remarkable feature of his career in espionage was that he never used false papers and never resorted to a cover-name. He was always known by his true name, Dr. Richard Sorge, Nazi journalist. It was a remarkable achievement that he survived undetected for over six years in Japan, a country with rigid censorship and under tight military and police control. He worked throughout with the same team of five, four well connected Japanese and one top GRU Radio operator-technician named Max Klausen. It was his firm rule never to recruit new agents on the spot. Just how wise that decision was is proved by the fact that through a sub-agent who was recruited by one of his five, suspicion about him was finally aroused. One of his agents was arrested, and it became obvious that soon he too would be exposed. He made plans to leave but delayed his departure— almost as though his was a fictional spy story-because of his infatuation for a Japanese dancing-girl. What he did not know was that she was working for Colonel Osaki, head of Japanese counter-intelligence. She reported to the colonel that on their way to his house Sorge had thrown away a torn piece of paper. This last message before Sorge’s arrest read: ‘Japanese carrier air forces attacking United States Navy at Pearl Harbor probably November six. . . ‘ There is no evidence whether or not the message got through to the Kremlin. Certainly there was no sign that President Roosevelt ever received it from that source. Source - pages 160-161 Who’s Who In Espionage Ronald Payne and Christopher Dobson - 1984 First Published in Great Britain under the title of The Dictionary of Espionage in Great Britain by Harrap Ltd. What I discovered as in the above segment is that several sources, including maryferrell.org - Chronologies, spell the GRU operator Max Klausen with a "K." But in one of the first seminal works on the Sorge Affair, entitled Target Tokyo: The Story of the Sorge Spy Ring - Gordon W. Prange, with Donald Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon, his name is not spelled with a K, but with a C, as in Max Gottfried Friedrich Clausen and wife Anna Wallenius. The English translation of the German wikipedia regarding Max Clausen, seems to indicate his headstone shows the spelling with a C, as opposed to a K. Now, I believe it would be worth knowing whether the two Clausen's Max and Henry were related, and even if they weren't, Donald Gibson's book is a perfect companion book to The Man Who Knew Too Much. Gibson makes a persuasive argument that Owen Lattimore and the Institute For Pacific Relations as well as International House seem to pose some of the same odd relationships to names associated with, not only the Kennedy Assassinaton, but with members of the hierarchy of the Warren Commission, J Edgar Hoover and Allen Dulles, just as the Noel Field/Oswald/J.F. and Allen Dulles linkages to Albert Schweitzer College.... There is definitely a lot of updating to do on this topic.....

There is one really important point that I never have heard, [or seen] made, which, I would imagine exists only among the believers in a large conspiracy, and when I say large, I do not mean large numerically, but large in terms of different parties, Army Intelligence, Secret Service, Washington bigwigs, Dallas connections, CIA, anti-Castro groups..... Which is, when you look at every piece of evidence amassed over the last, almost 49 years now, does anyone besides myself believe that, at least occasionally in the time-line of events we are seeing different plots, some of which had no relation to the plot that succeeded. In other words, obviously the Chicago and Miami plots didn't succeed, but I am talking about what appear to be highly relevant pieces of the puzzle, which, if we knew everything would reveal it wasn't as an integral part of the puzzle as it now appears to be.

As contradictory as it may seem, there is very little on this thread I disagree with. I certainly consider Tom Scully a friend, and as clichè as it sounds, "I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend your right to say it." I believe the only real point I am trying to make is best summed up in a question for Tom Scully. If there is no ultimately no difference between the Republican and Democratic parties, does it not make all of our participation on the JFK Debate Forum and determining the truth regarding the assassination of President Kennedy practically a pastime for imbeciles?

This thread, in my opinion has a great deal of underlying implications. Some of which have bothered me for a very long time. Len Colby wrote, in two prior posts, and which I have excerpted. Len Colby post # 38 excerpt I actually agree with Tom that the “targeted killing” policy is morally objectionable the notion that this makes the Obama “more or less indistinguishable morally from” the Hitler regime is absurd hyperbole, worse he arrogantly calls those who differ “sheeple” who are NOT “observant, sane individuals”. Len Colby post # 44 excerpt My feelings are actually mixed on this. I think such killings are justified but only in extraordinary circumstances when apprehending the target is not a viable option and there is compelling evidence that leaving them free will lead to the deaths of innocent civilians. Besides the the moral questions one problem is that others will take the place of those killed. I guess in Tom's wrapped view that makes me no better than Borman and Goring. end The reason I posted Len's comments? Because I totally agree with every sentence in the above passages. And I sure as hell, am not ashamed of it. What does make me ashamed, is when opinion and fact are introduced into a 'beyond controversial thread' such as this one, that it seems what is implied is, "Well, Obama is not a true liberal when it comes down to human rights, so you might as well vote for Mitt Romney." That implication, in my mind is the sickest piece of spin the human mind can conceptualize. Mitt Romney first of all, has zero foreign policy experience and in a projected Romney White House would arguably resemble former President Bush in letting his team, ala Cheney, Rumsfeld ie the Neocons, run the show, with all that sentence implies. What decisions did they make? Which were virtually the same themes that Bugliosi sounded in his tome which stated George Bush should stand trial for war crimes. For the sake of avoiding an elongated post, I will leave it at that. Backtracking a little, lamenting what used to be and we would never have done that in the 1990's, 1980's or even 1970's, is an anachronism. It isn't the 70's, 80's, 90's, it is 2012 and we are, albeit at least partially through the efforts of forces such as the creators of the Project For A New American Century engaged in a conflict with radical Islam. I also very much agree with the point made by....... Pat Speer.... "Not to be bum anyone out, but we have to be realistic. Obama knows that he stands no chance of being re-elected, and avoiding America's further slide to third-world status, if he doesn't make the pampered fat electorate feel comfy and cozy at night. If word got out that he knew where Awlaki was hiding, but failed to kill him because of "The Constitution" or some other piece of paper, it would be all over. He'd be denounced as unfit by the bulk of the media--the same jokers that are now questioning his actions--and many independents would be swayed. Let's remember Jimmy Carter. He TRIED to rescue the hostages held in Iran, but that wasn't good enough. Despite the fact he'd been an officer on a nuclear submarine at the height of the cold war, and Ronald Reagan had merely been an actor in propaganda films during WWII, the right wing, along with their friends in the media, were able to convince the American public he was weak, militarily, and Reagan was strong. Reagan then used this to get elected, whereby he proceeded to pump hundreds of billions into wasteful projects designed to reward his cronies and supporters, while simultaneously cutting taxes on the wealthy. This led us to where we are." "Obama knows this, and is trying to make sure it doesn't happen again. As long as no one running against him would balk at killing Awlaki (outside of Ron Paul) he knows he has to do it. I mean. given the choice between a dead Awlaki and a President Perry, I'd choose a dead Awlaki. While Awlaki's role in terrorist attacks was never proven, he had plenty of opportunity to denounce violence and Al Qaeda, and refused to do so even though his life had been threatened. May he rest." END But again, it appears to me that if you accept Tom Scully's premise as originally stated, then you are boxed into a mindset that Obama is a tyrant, and [here's the part that makes me very angry,] "might as well vote for Mitt Romney because it doesnt matter which party is in office." I hope that is not what Tom meant. If you think it doesen't matter which party is in office, if we, in late January 2012, are referring to President Romney you will see a complete jettisoning of the beginning of what had brought us back from the financial abyss. The new Republican foreign/domestic policies will be economically compassionate conservatism without the "compassion,"and a foreign policy that will attempt to get the war on terror hooked up even more dramatically to Israel, where the inevitable neocon foreign policy in regards to "radical" Islam is to kick-start the status quo of 2012 into a conflict of Biblical proportions, and I do mean literally. It is no secret that the separation of church and state is a constitutional edifice, that, in effect prevented what George W. Bush, and other usefull idiots wanted: a mechanism wherein without that constitutional provision could, indeed more than likely would lead to a WASPish religion, in which some elements would be like a Western Inquisition of the third millenium, where if you are Jewish, African-American, Hispanic and especially Muslim, or a political moderate to liberal, you would be required to "sign an oath" or possibly even a decade or so from now, "wear something" that attests to your "identity." At that point, reflections on Obama's presidency may very well be similar to what many are now parallel's to former President Carter's time in office. With the same subsequent point, maybe he wasn't as bad as "we" thought he was. In which case, the nightmare of American foreign policy of 2012 under President Obama, would seem like a day at the park in comparison. President Kennedy faced criticism from the left regarding his policies as being not liberal enough, [see the intellectual crowd that created the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.] Looking back at that dichotomy over half a decade has proven his liberal critics didn't know what he knew, and JFK's ability to utilize the political process to, at least attempt a united front politically on such issues shows that there is a reason leaving the White House, and "looking like you've aged dramatically," in four years are not mutually exclusive.

I wanted to respond to Bill Kelly's request regarding what the Family Jewels documents had to say about RFK in relation to the Castro-Assassination plots....... Unfortunately, virtually nothing in terms of what the situation was in mid/late 1963. If you go to the Operation Valkyrie thread and see page 1, my entry on post #9, I believe you can see what is reprinted below. In one document, a memo to William E Colby on page 22, there is a passage that reads...... 5. During the period when Des Fitzgerald was in charge of the Cuban Task Force, DCI McCone's office learned, quite by accident, that Fitgerald had secured the cooperation of several prominent U.S. business firms in denying economic items to Cuba. There was no question but that the businessmen were glad to cooperate, but knowledge of this operation had to be rather widespread. 6. 7. 8. There are three examples of using Agency funds which I know to be controversial. One was the expenditure of money under Project MOSES in securing the release of Cuban Brigade prisoners. Details of this operation are best known to Larry Houston, Mike Miskovsky, __________, and James Smith. Second', as you well know, when Lou Conein received his summons to report to the Joint General Staff Headquarters on 1 November 1963, a large sum of cash went with him. My impression is that the accounting for this and its use has never been very frank or complete. Third, at one of the early Special Group meetings attended by McCone he took strong exception to proposals to spend Agency funds to improve the economic viability of West Berlin, and for an investment program in Mali, his general position was that such expenditures were not within the Agency's charter, and that he would allow such spending only on the direct personal request of the Secretary of State or the Secretary of Defense, or sic tote [the] White House. END another part of The Family Jewels which is extremely pertinent to the subject matter, at least as far as JMWAVE, Shackley and the "who knew what about whacking the beard, ie AMTHUG" is a portion that goes back timeline wise to the period when RFK learned that the CIA was using members of organized crime in a Castro Assassination plot see Momo Salvatore Giancana and Santos Trafficante and linkages to Johnny Rosselli and a key facilitator Juan Orta. This is roughly August September 1960. In Family Jewels document 104-10303-10010 probably changed to 1998.09.27.08:02:11:920115, what is probably in the ARRB 1995 or 1996 releases. A document on Johnny Rosselli has a passage that reads..... DEC 1970 MEMORANDUM FOR Director of Central Intelligence SUBJECT ROSELLI Johnny This memorandum is for information only 1. In August 1960, Mr. Richard M. Bissell approached Colonel Sheffield Edwards to determine if the Office of Security had assets that may assist in a sensitive mission requiring gangster-type action. The mission target was Fidel Castro. Because of its extreme sensitivity, only a small group was made privy to the project. The DCI was briefed and gave his approval. Colonel J. C. King, Chief, WH Division, was briefed, but all details were deliberately concealed from any of the JMWAVE officials. Certain TSD and Communications personnel participated in the initial planning stages, but were not witting of the purpose of the mission. Even though these documents have been declassified for years, it is very obvious that the next step as far as the JFK research community is concerned i.e., the remaining pertinent documents are either still classified, or dare I say were shredded. I say that because when you research the JFK Assassination and get the real story, you reach a point where nothing surprises you. Lastly, Bill Kelly, in an earlier post on this thread, mentioned that the anti-Cuban exiles in Miami would have been incensed had they known of the JFK administration's back-channel diplomatic efforts through Lisa Harker, Carlos Lechuga to name just a couple, to reach an accomodation with the Castro regime. Never mind the fact that there would have been a great possibility that JFK could have obtained concessions such as [the ones we have been trying to reach for the last 48 years, anyway] renunciation of Communism, desisting in exporting the Castro revolution to member states of the Organization of American States, et cetera. In fact, that is exactly what did happen, see cancellation of JFK motorcade in Miami and use of helicopter instead. We now know there was an assassination attempt planned for the Orange Bowl when JFK made his promise to see the Cuban exile flag flying over a free Havana. I might add that when the Miami intrigues with JFK were going on Lee Harvey Oswald was not present. A hint to the great unwashed that when an assassination of a President occurs, it is on the record that another Miami party, Joseph Milteer, was quoted as saying ......someone will be arrested just to throw the public off..... Final Thought Regarding RFK..... The only high quality audio recording made at the Ambassador hotel on the night of June 4, 1968 has been poured over using state of the art audio/computer technology not available in 1968 and the revelation is offered that more than eight shots were fired; [s. B. Sirhan's Iver Johnson revolver could only hold eight bullets] and also that there are portions of the audio tape that show two shots occurring so rapidly that it is impossible to have been fired from the same gun, unless you are one of the "Sirhan acted alone crowd" see Conspiracy Test: The RFK Assassination

Nathaniel, it is a weird coincidence that you would update this thread with those particular questions, because this is one area, I've been working on a lot lately. In all honesty I cannot definitively answer all of your questions. But I believe that I can get you in the ballpark so to speak. I will address them one at a time. 1. What does this suggest about the degree to which conflicts between the Air Force and the Navy, present in the military reorganization of 1947, were still present in 1963? Answer: I tend to look at this particular issue, the Navy League meeting in Puerto Rico, as symptomatic of the fact that JFK's appointment of McNamara as DOD, despite good intentions on the part of Kennedy and McNamara definitely was one more log to add to the fire in terms of the fairly one sided enmity and distrust the military establishment felt toward President Kennedy and McNamara and towards veteran foreign policy figures such as Averill Harriman, for one. I wouldn't include George Kennan in persons the military hawks had bad feelings towards. One person very much in the loop in all of this was [see google books; title below] George S. Brown General, U.S. Air Force Destined for Stars - Edgar F. Puryear, Jr., as part of the structure of the JFK Administration, Brown, according to Puryear won high marks from the military establishment and the Kennedy administration for being (as I would categorize it) a peacekeeper between the two parties. In one passage, [p. 117] he writes......... Gen. Gabriel Disoway, said of the relationship between George [strong] and Secretary McNamara: Brown would come down and tell General LeMay, the Air Force Chief of Staff, or General McKee, the Vice Chief of Staff, Look here's what McNamara is going to do whether you like it or not; this is whats going to happen and you better adjust yourself to it. This is the type of man he was. He didn’t mince words. And he was just as frank with McNamara as he was with everybody else........I might add that McNamara is quoted in the book as saying that Brown was basically one person he always was able to rely upon. The dynamic of the enmity was most if not all of the hawks had peaked out career wise from the World War II era to the late 1950’s early 1960’s, but they didn’t think so. They believed stratagems and techniques to fight the Cold War against the Soviet-WARSAW Pact/China/Cuba triumvirate were not obsolete, when in fact, they were very obsolete in the era of Mutually Assured Destruction, as the fine points of the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis more than testify. The whiz-kids maybe a little over-exuberant did know this and I would imagine there was a little bit of contempt on their side as well. So, that was fueling the bad feelings, compounded by the Hotline between Moscow/Washington, the Test-Ban Treaty... and well, you get the picture. 2. Did these conflicts play a direct or indirect role in the assassination? Response: I would be lying if I said I knew definitively the answer to that question, but I would say that it, [the reorganization of the various military and intelligence agencies] didn’t hurt the persons involved in the assassination, and did hurt JFK, in the sense that in any administration there is a lot to keep track of and the reorganization only exacerbated the JFK administration’s ability to monitor “threats from within,”especially if you consider only RFK had the diligence and intensity to monitor that area and be effective as Attorney General. I will expound on this in a matter that I personally feel to be fairly cutting edge as far as my personal research ability is concerned. There is turnover in any administration before an election, even more if you count the military infrastructure; even though 1963 was not an election year, there was, I believe an inordinate amount of “retirements among military and intelligence personnel.” And they were, from what I’ve seen, practically all in the summer or early fall of 1963..Just two names out of many: Brigadier General Edward Lansdale and Colonel Philip J. Corso, the list which I haven’t compiled, but is in my head is......extensive, and I cannot say that the reorganization of the military would have accounted for all of them. 3. To what extent did McNamara feel capable of trying to tackle inter-service rivalry? Did his involvement in the TFX affair and his apparent conflicts with the Navy play a role in his decision to continue on under LBJ ? Response: Knowing what I do of McNamara’s background and having read his biography, I would say he was supremely confident in his ability of dealing with inter-service rivalry. I also believe that his “involvement” in the TFX affair, does not appear to me to be any different than any other head of DOD’s involvement in a actual or potential scandal. What was at the heart of the TFX Scandal, at least as I see it, was the fact that Korth had personal business relationships ie conflict of interest regarding his tenure as Secretary of the Navy. Either he was really stupid, thought he would get away with out anyone knowing, or even deliberately trying to sabotage the JFK administration, I would imagine only Fred Korth could answer definitively and he has been dead for several decades now. But for all of its flaws, Vice-President LBJ being the biggest as far as integrity was concerned, the JFK Administration’s historical report card for tolerating corruption on a political level grades very high, excepting private piccadiloes which to say have been extensively documented, adultery, that is.

Daniel, no explanation needed. Your good, and hey if somebody gets something wrong, as I did it needs to be pointed out. Regarding Lewis Coleman McMahon, [thanks Greg] he, doesen't seem to be a "really big" name in Dallas related infrastructure, although I am going by Darwin Payne's Dallas history, and Fred Florence's bio. Florence died in 1960. Regarding the finer points of Lev Aronson, I will have to check over the book and some other sources. But I appreciate the interest.

Thanks for the correction. I guess its true what they say about assuming......except there's no you in this case.....lol

Lots of things to focus on here regarding this thread. That Ruth Paine reference to Oswald being a Trotskyite definitively would have been on the November 5, 1963 Hosty memo to New Orleans, if for no other reason than it had been the most recent information Hosty had picked up from his last visit to the Paines. One of the litmus tests for Warren Commission documents, ie "something of considerable value as opposed to someone saying the Communists or the Cuban's were the killers" is when you run across one of those "mis-spelt names" so common when a key person is the topic. Which brings us to The Lost Cellos of Lev Aronson by Francis Brent - Atlas and Company. The book is great IF, your interest in one of the most interesting members of the Russian/Latvian emigre community is strictly musical, however readers interested in detailed history would be disappointed in said book if they wanted to know anything about Lev Aronson's thoughts about President Kennedy, much less the actual assassination. As a matter of fact, three topics I would have bet a large sum of money would be found in the book appear more or less, nowhere, Oswald, Yakeo Okui, [Lev brought her to the infamous Declan Ford, meeting where the emigres and the Paines and the Demohrenschildt's all first met LHO] and President Kennedy. I respect any artist's, [ie writer] right to define the terms of their work, its just that the framework of the book, screams "I just don't want to get into any of that controversial stuff." I guess I shouldn't be surprised; look at the Obama/Romney sideshow, you would think the President was Hitler, Bin Laden and Aliester Crowley rolled into one, running against a man who is the epitome of the 2% richest American's, but I digress. There is considerable reason to believe that Lev Aronson was much more than a famed cellist who happened to be living in Dallas and who just happened to bring Yakeo Okui to a party where some people there probably knew he was to be the goat sacrifice to be laid at the feet of the American people for John F. Kennedy's life. By the way, even though it sound's contradictory, I certainly believe that it is possible, even probable that there was nothing sinister about Yakeo and Lev attending the get together, but to say there was nothing deeper is another story.. So here's the rub on WC Docs primarily CD 932 and CD 140 on Lev. Commission Document 950 - Dallas Police Department Curry Letter of 19 May 1964 re: Oswald File pg 140 CRIMINAL INTELLIGENCE (6) LEV ARONSON Sirs Pursuant to the instructions of Captain W P GANNAWAY SUBJECT was interviewed by the undersigned officers and the following report submitted SUBJECT who is Russian born resides at 8418 Swananosh..... There was no such street, but there was an 8418 Shenandoah, which was right off Lomo Alto.... While we're at it.... so who used to live there before Lev... 'Fightin Men' News of Texans in U.S. Service; April 12, DMN Four Dallas Army Officers received promotions in an official list from the War Department Saturday. Lewis Coleman McMahan, 8418 Shenandoah, was promoted to major. Charles Willard Zahn, 4718 Reiger. Bryan Heard Keathley, 2503 Burlington, to captain. Robert Borden Parker 1028 Haines to first lieutenant. Hmmm. Below numerous documents years after the assassination. DISPATCH ON CONTACT WITH LEV ARONSON, OWNER OF A PLACE FREQUENTED BY S pg 3 Found in: HSCA Segregated CIA Collection, Box 14 RIF#: 1993.07.14.15:52:54:710280 (1/22/1969) CIA#: 80T01357A SOVIET BLOC DIVISION TITLE DISPATCH ON CONTACT WITH LEV ARONSON OWNER OF A PLACE FREQUENTED BY SOVIETS AND ALSO LEAD TO ANTI-SOVIET BULGARIAN FIRST SECRETARY DATE 01/22/69 PAGES 4 SUBJECTS ARONSON LEV https://www.maryferr....do?docId=27578 RIF#: 104-10069-10041 (01/22/69) CIA#: 80T01357A REDTOP AEREGATTA/2 1. AEREGATTA/2 Further contact with owner of Restaurant frequented by Soviets and his report of tightening controls on intellectuals in the Soviet Union. 201-226313 Robert: Does anyone see a inherent contradiction of topic matter after comparing the review of the book with what appears above? THE LOST CELLOS OF LEV ARONSON By Frances Brent Atlas and Co., $24, 224 pages, illus. REVIEWED BY PRISCILLA S. TAYLOR Lev Aronson is not exactly a household name in nonmusical circles, but the story of his survival in Nazi Germany and eventual emigration to America, where he became a respected orchestra cellist and teacher, if not the soloist he had once aspired to be, is gripping. Frances Brent, a poet, doesn’t attempt to weave her material together like a true biography, primarily because her sources — Mr. Aronson’s unpublished memoir and oral history and interviews with his relatives and associates — are fragmentary and sometimes conflicting. Instead, the author has concentrated on vividly conveying how a young Jewish musician from Latvia was swept up in Hitler’s mad efforts to exterminate every Jew in Europe and survived to reclaim his life and profession. Twenty-five members of his family perished in the Holocaust while he did slave labor under the Nazis in Riga, Danzig and the nearby camps for four years until, in 1945, he managed to flee the approaching Russians and take refuge in the U.S. sector of Berlin. Lev Aronson was born in 1912 in Mitava, a provincial river city in the duchy of Kurland on the Baltic. He grew up in a family that settled in Riga after deportation to Russia during a pogrom (Hitler wasn’t the first to use cattle cars to move Jews from place to place). Lev’s father was a tailor, his mother a seamstress. Lev began cello lessons at age six. He became a student and, eventually, a close friend of Gregor Piatigorsky in Berlin, where Lev had gone to study law; both musicians studied, at different times, with the famed Julius Klengel in Leipzig, whose students also included William Pleeth, Janos Starker and Robert Hofmekler (well known and beloved in the Washington area as a cello teacher in McLean, Va., and at the D.C. Youth Orchestra). Before the war reached Latvia, Mr. Aronson performed and recorded in that country (he was principal cello in a provincial orchestra) and elsewhere in Europe. Then, during the first week of the German occupation in June 1941, the authorities summoned him to turn over his two precious cellos, one of which was said to be an Amati cello, and bows, including a Tourte. He never saw them again, and never got over their loss. In 1986, at age 74, he was still petitioning the West German government for reparations. He died two years later. The account of Mr. Aronson’s experiences during the war is typically horrendous but occasionally relieved by acts of human kindness. When in desperation he answered a call in the camp for experienced welders (there was no call for musicians), he was sent to work at the submarine shipyard in Danzig. There, one fellow worker, an Italian prisoner of war who had heard that Mr. Aronson was a musician, approached him with, “You’re not a welder, and you’ll be in danger if they find out. You must learn right away — I’ll teach you.” Whereupon he coached him in a relaxed-wrist welding technique “similar to bowing.” A fellow prisoner, a part-German, part-Polish clarinetist, assessed Mr. Aronson’s welding skill as hopeless and volunteered to do all the work in exchange for music instruction, asking questions such as “What is a cadence? What are harmonic tones? What is a mode?” Mr. Aronson taught him the history of music, century by century, while they knelt on the steel plates. “With a piece of chalk he kept in his pocket, the clarinet player took dictation, writing on the newly welded steel.” Occasionally, writes the author, to impress others within earshot, the clarinetist would scream out, “Goddamn swine, why can’t you do this better?” After a few weeks, the clarinetist was called up to “the Reich’s work service” and Mr. Aronson never saw him again. Sometimes, as the prisoners were marched from their barracks to the Danzig railway station to transport their food and water, Mr. Aronson saw people from his prewar life in Riga. One day, the author says, he noticed “a well-known violinist who had once been a friend”; the man was wearing a “heavy black coat with a fur collar,” and upon being recognized, instantly turned away. Mr. Aronson’s barracks were eventually liberated by the Soviets, but that was not good news. The Soviets decided that because the cellist and his fellow musician from Riga, Gregor Shelkan, were Jews who had survived when millions had died, they must be spies who had “helped the German machinery,” and promptly interned them and prepared to ship them off to the Soviet Union. The two musicians, with the aid of a friendly Polish officer, managed to escape by train and on foot and headed west. After four years without a cello, Mr. Aronson never ceased trying to find an instrument to play along the way, and apparently followed up a number of rumors about cellos buried in fields of the war-torn landscape. There were many narrow escapes before both men separately made their way to West Berlin; Lev Aronson and Nina Bukowska, a dancer and fellow refugee, were married there in 1947. It was Piatigorsky who helped Mr. Aronson find a worthy cello and emigrate to the United States. He auditioned in Europe for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, and once he had reached America, conductor Antal Dorati hired him to share the principal cello stand with Janos Starker. Mr. Aronson remained there for some four decades, honing the skills of an army of students. Unfortunately, this book offers almost nothing on Mr. Aronson’s life in Dallas; the acknowledgments mention that a stepdaughter provided documentary assistance, but there’s no mention of a second wife. Ms. Brent has written a sensitive Holocaust memoir of a musician who survived with his humanity in tact and deserves to be remembered beyond his circle of friends and colleagues in Dallas. Priscilla S. Taylor is a writer in McLean. One of her daughters, a professional cellist in London, studied with Robert Hofmekler in McLean and with William Pleeth in London. • Priscilla S. Taylor is a writer in McLean. One of her daughters, a professional cellist in London, studied with Robert Hofmekler in McLean and with William Pleeth in London. more FAMED CELLIST LEV ARONSON DIES AT 76 The Dallas Morning News - Sunday, November 13, 1988 Author: John Ardoin, Music Critic of The Dallas Morning News: The Dallas Morning News (DAL) + _____ Lev Aronson, outstanding cellist and renowned teacher, died of cancer Saturday morning at his home in North Dallas. He was 76. Considered one of the greatest cello teachers in the world, Aronson was co-author of a two-volume work on cello techniques that today is held as a classic. Aronson, a longtime resident of Dallas, was born in Germany on Feb. 7, 1912, and raised in Riga, Latvia. He first studied cello in Riga and began playing professionally at age 13. He worked in Berlin between the two world wars with famed cellist Gregor Piatigorsky, who became a lifelong friend and colleague. Aronson had successfully launched a career as a concert and recording artist in Europe when World War II broke out and he was interned in a series of German concentration camps. He survived and came to America in April 1948, where he auditioned for conductor Antal Dorati in New York. Dorati had just been engaged as music director of the Dallas Symphony, which was to be revived that fall after being disbanded during the war. Dorati hired Aronson, who soon rose to be principal cellist with the orchestra, a post he held for 20 years. He was also a frequent soloist with the DSO and a professor of cello at Southern Methodist University. Aronson gave up his post in the orchestra to teach full time at Baylor University. After a decade there, he returned to SMU's faculty in 1980. His students are in the front rank of string players today. Two former pupils, John Sharp and Christopher Adkins, hold first-chair positions with the Chicago Symphony and the DSO, respectively. Two more of his students -- Lynn Harrell and Ralph Kirschbaum -- are leading soloists. "I remember quite vividly that he would use metaphors and talk about a rippling stream and the sunlight cascading on a glistening rock,' Kirschbaum told The Dallas Morning News in 1986. "And here I was thinking about my third finger and where to put the bow, and suddenly he was exposing me to a whole new way of allowing my own feelings to be expressed in music.' Friends and colleagues described Aronson as a superb raconteur, a gourmet and a committed humanitarian. They said he lived his life to the fullest and often with an almost childlike enjoyment. The Dallas Opera's artistic director, Nicola Rescigno, recalled on Saturday first working with Aronson in 1957 when the opera company was formed. "I shall never forget the day I read through with the orchestra the score to Rossini's L'italiana in Algeri. This miraculous comedy was our first stage production, and then it was a little-known score. "When we reached the last note there was a stunned silence. I think we were all overcome by the magic of the music. Suddenly Lev jumped up and said, "Let's start over from the beginning and play it again!' That was the kind of man and the caliber of musician he was. How he will be missed.' Within weeks of his 75th birthday last year, three of his most famous students were in Dallas for concerts and took the opportunity to pay tribute to the man. Lynn Harrell spoke of Aronson's "incredible sensitivity. He was never a cookie cutter for making cellists. He took the trouble to find out what made you tick as a person and how to make the most of that. . . . The time I spent with Lev was a high, and everything he played for me stuck in my ear and influenced me.' To Ralph Kirschbaum, "Lev was larger than life. I had never been so stimulated before. . . . Lynn and I have many similarities but also great differences. This is because we were handled and influenced by Lev in a way that our own individual voices were reserved and encouraged. That is what a great teacher is all about.' Aronson was fond of saying that he had been trying to retire for twenty years, but those who knew him said they could not imagine him taking it easy. "Sometimes I'm told that I am teaching too many students,' he would say with a twinkle in his eye. ""What do you need all those students for,' I am asked? "I don't,' I say, "they do.' ' Yet he resisted accolades. "I am not famous,' he told one writer. "I am known. My fate is probably to be known more than to be famous.' A memorial service will be at 2:30 p.m. Monday at Sparkman-Hillcrest Funeral Northwest Highway Chapel. Memorials may be sent to the SMU school of music.

For an attorney with the Esquire affixed, his grave, seems out of character. The first obit is apparently his son. I found notices of death but a bona fide obit seems rather hard to come by.....Might I suggest The Erie Times, Erie, Pa., or perhaps The N Y Times, spiderbytes.... Dr. Bill (William Patrick) Illig, age 75, died on April 13, 2011, at his Tulsa home surrounded by his loving family. He was preceded in death by his parents, William F. Illig, Esq. and Mary Cleary Illig, two granddaughters, Sarah Minielly and Mary Claire Minielly, and a brother-in-law, Robbie Robison. He is survived by his wife of 46 years, Hannah Reynolds Illig, and three daughters: Natalie (Mrs. John) McNicholas of Naples, Fla., Mary (Mrs. David) Minielly of Edmond, Okla., and Tricia (Mrs. Eric) Davis of Tulsa, Okla. He was the proud grandfather of Taylor Davis, Nicole Davis, Alec Minielly and Matthew Minielly. He is further survived by two brothers: James M. Illig of San Francisco, Calif., Joseph J. Illig, M.D. of Colorado Springs, Colo., and two sisters: Denise Robison of Erie, Pa., and Mary Virginia (Mrs. Stuart) Dye, of Bethesda, Md., together with many nieces and nephews. Bill was born in Erie, Pa., and graduated from Cathedral Preparatory School in Erie. He is a graduate of Georgetown University, with a B.S. in History, and a Cum Laude graduate of the Georgetown University School of Medicine, Washington, D.C. He was an Intern at Grady Memorial Hospital of Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Ga. Dr. Illig was then awarded a three-year Fellowship in Clinical Pathology at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn. While at Mayo Clinic, Bill was called into the U.S. Army Medical Corps and served as an Anatomic Pathologist at Ft. McPherson, Ga., and Chief Pathologist of the Ninth Medical Laboratory in Saigon, Vietnam, from which Captain Illig was honorably discharged and awarded the Bronze Star Medal. Dr. Illig was a Fellow, College of American Pathologists, a Fellow, American Society of Clinical Pathologists, a Diplomat of the National Board of Medical Examiners and the American Society of Cytology, to name a few of his professional affiliations. He was very active in the Tulsa medical community as Staff Pathologist at St. Francis Hospital, Director of Tumor Registry at St. Francis Hospital, and past chairman of the Cancer Committee at St. Francis Hospital. He was a Clinical Associate Professor, Tulsa Medical College of the University of Oklahoma and author of published research in Surgical Pathology/Cytology as an affiliate of the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group. Bill is referred to as a "legend" for his medical knowledge and his passion for excellence and accuracy. He was also an accomplished taxidermist, bow hunter and an enthusiastic and adventurous outdoorsman. The many friends of Dr. Illig are invited to the Rosary at St. Rita Chapel of Cascia Hall Preparatory School on Friday, April 15, 2011, at 7:00 p.m. And they are especially welcomed the following morning to his Funeral Mass at Christ the King Church at 9:00 a.m. A breakfast reception will immediately follow at the Church. In lieu of flowers, the family welcomes donations to the Christ the King Catholic Church, 1520 S. Rockford, Tulsa, OK 74120. To leave condolences and to share memories, please go to www.fitzgeraldivychapel.com. Fitzgerald Ivy Chapel (918) 585-1151. Published in the Erie Times-News on April 14, 2011 William F. Illig, Esq 1905-1989 Calvary Cemetery, Erie Pennsylvania http://www.findagrav...9538734&df=all Also http://www.findagrav...r&GRid=47748013 also see MERCYHURST MAGAZINE Winter 1989-90 on scribd.com http://www.scribd.co...-Winter-1989-90 Condolences and our Prayers To Mary C. Illig, a member of the Carpe Diem Society on the death of her husband William F. Illig, Esq, and to Denise (Illig) Robison, his daughter also a member of the Carpe Diem Society. http://www.jfklancer...Dr_Burkley.html AGENCY: HSCA ORIGINATOR: HSCA FROM: RICHARD SPRAGUE TO: FILE MEMORANDUM March 18, 1977 TO : FILE FROM : RICHARD A. SPRAGUE William F. Illig, an attorney from Erie, Pa., contacted me in Philadelphia this date, advising me that he represents Dr. George G. Burkley, Vice Admiral, U.S. Navy retired, who had been the personal physician for presidents Kennedy and Johnson. Mr. Illig stated that he had a luncheon meeting with his client, Dr. Burkley, this date to take up some tax matters. Dr. Burkley advised him that although he, Burkley, had signed the death certificate of President Kennedy in Dallas, he had never been interviewed and that he has information in the Kennedy assassination indicating that others besides Oswald must have participated. Illig advised me that his client is a very quiet, unassuming person, not wanting any publicity whatsoever, but he, Illig, was calling me with his client's consent and that his client would talk to me in Washington. a possible relative? Jack Anderson FBI files Release Four file 05 www.governmentattic.org/Anderson/Anderson4-05.pdf File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - Quick View FBI's Los Angeles Off1ce and subsequently declined prosecut...... Administrative Assistant Frank Vladsen or the Labor Committee staff director. Director Frank J. Illig, Jr., External Affairs Division Frank J. "Bucky" Illig, a retired FBI agent and member of the Sports Hall of Fame of St. Joseph's Collegiate Institute, died Monday (Sept. 8, 1997) in Alexandria, Va., after a brief bout with cancer. He was 68. A member of the class of 1946, Illig earned eight letters in baseball, basketball and football at a time when only three varsity sports were available. In 1945, he quarterbacked the Marauders to their first undefeated season in more than 20 years, throwing nine touchdown passes in those seven games. As a basketball player, Illig won Second Team All-Catholic recognition as a junior. Elected team captain as a senior, he was named the league's most valuable …....

UP IN THE DESERT ABOVE LAS VEGAS HIDES A DUSTY AIR BASE RINGED BY towering mountains, buffered by an atomic testing preserve and guarded around the clock. It isn't much to look at -- a knot of hangars, fuel tanks and prefab living quarters beside a dry lake-bed and a long runway. The parched ground sprouts little but creosote, scorpion weed and the odd Joshua tree But for generations, this lonely outpost has itched some people like a bad case of poison ivy. Secrecy about what goes on there has fueled all manner of speculation: It's a port for visiting spacecraft, or a venue for alien autopsies, or a lab where captured UFOs are reverse-engineered to America's military advantage. An industry has sprung up around this guesswork -- TV tell-alls, books and websites by the dozens. The public appetite for conspiracy theories involving Area 51 -- aka Groom Lake, Dreamland, Homey Airport, Paradise Ranch or Watertown -- appears insatiable. Reasonable people, smart people, eat them up. So when a book comes along that promises to really, truly explain the place, and said book is by a contributor to the Los Angeles Times Magazine and put out by a major publisher and wins praise from The New York Times, NPR and national TV shows (Fox & Friends called it "an incredible piece of journalism"), we can't help but take notice. For much of its 523 pages, Annie Jacobsen's Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base is the story of the men who, starting in 1955, developed and tested secret Cold War reconnaissance aircraft at Groom Lake -- the CIA's U-2 and A-12 Oxcart, the latter of which flew with modifications as the Air Force's SR-71 Blackbird. Jacobsen interviewed 74 people, including 32 who lived and worked on the base. Many of them belong to Roadrunners Internationale, the alumni association of Groom Lake pilots, engineers, mechanics and such. The Roadrunners gladly spoke to her: Their Cold War activities had recently been declassified; they were getting on in years; they wanted their achievements recorded. "We were very, very happy with what she was doing," T.D. Barnes, a radar expert and the Roadrunners' president, told us. "She did a great job of researching. She did everything a good journalist would do." Retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonels Roger W. Andersen and Francis J. Murray were also impressed; Murray said Jacobsen "was constantly taking notes" and "really seemed to be making sure that what we told her was correct." But for all of Jacobsen's apparent diligence, the men were surprised, and not happily, by the finished product: After Barnes read Area 51, for instance, he denounced her in a blog post as "an author who refuses to repent her literary crimes and errors." The focus of the Roadrunners' criticism is a UFO conspiracy theory so fantastic that it makes the infamous and historically discredited tale about a 1947 crash of a flying saucer in Roswell, N.M., seem tame. The bottom line of the traditional Roswell story is that the purported extraterrestrial UFO wreckage was taken to Area 51 and subsequently became the object of a massive government coverup. Relying on the testimony of a single unnamed source, Jacobsen's book repeats the claim that some sort of UFO crashed at Roswell. But in her telling, the craft wasn't of alien origin. Instead, it was a saucer built by the Soviets using technology they'd obtained from German engineers at the end of World War II. And there's more. According to her unnamed source, the craft was manned by human teenagers who had been medically altered to look like aliens, with giant heads and eyes like wraparound Oakleys. Who would do such a thing to children? Why, notorious Nazi death camp doctor Josef Mengele, Jacobsen writes, quoting her source quoting another source or sources, also unnamed. Seems that Mengele was working for Soviet boss Josef Stalin, who needed the mutants for a special project: scaring the daylights out of America with a fake alien visitation. Yes, it was all a hoax, the most lavish prank in history. Jacobsen reports that the wreckage was moved from Roswell to Wright Field (now Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, near Dayton, Ohio), where it was kept until 1951, then moved to the Nevada desert. There, her unnamed source was part of a team studying the saucer. They discovered that it ran on "electromagnetic frequency, or EMF," Jacobsen quotes him as saying, and he claims America has had the technology since. She offers no details on how this "EMF" propulsion might work, and the term could mean almost anything. All forms of electromagnetic radiation -- radio waves, visible light, X-rays and more -- operate at particular frequencies. The notion that devices such as airplanes might be powered remotely by electromagnetic energy is at least a century old. But the concept has never worked on a large scale -- the quantity of energy required would be unimaginably large. One more thing: Two "child-size aviators" from the craft, alive but comatose, wound up in the desert too. They were stored in gel, the unnamed source told Jacobsen, and they moved their mouths as if trying to speak. Why would America hide the fact that Mengele had produced these sad creatures at Stalin's behest? "Because," the source tells Jacobsen, "we were doing the same thing … We performed medical experiments on handicapped children and prisoners," and we did it "at least through the 1980s." Jacobsen offers no corroboration for this; instead, she presents irrelevant information that has been trotted out for many years by Roswell alien UFO conspiracy theorists. She writes that she pressed her source for details of the horrors he saw at Area 51, but he wouldn't budge. "He said he was hurting," Jacobsen writes. "That soon he would die. That, really, it was best that I did not learn any more because I didn't have a need-to-know." Could this be true? Could any of this be true? Let's start with the flying saucer, which Jacobsen ascribes to German aeronautical engineers Walter and Reimar Horten. It's a fact that before and during the war, the Horten brothers built a series of ever more sophisticated all-wing aircraft, culminating with the jet-powered Horten 229, a boomerang-shaped contrivance that bore a passing resemblance to Jack Northrop's YB-49 bomber prototype of the late '40s, as well as to the U.S. Air Force's much more recent B-2 Spirit stealth bomber. Jacobsen writes that the brothers might have been at work on something more ambitious at war's end, and that the invading Soviets might have seized their blueprints. Within a few pages, she refers matter-of-factly to "the Horten brothers and their advanced flying saucer." Jacobsen cites postwar German sources who described and even sketched what she calls "saucer-like" craft. One was shaped like a half-moon, another, according to "Professor George," was "very much like a round cake with a large sector cut out." We searched for evidence, finding none, that the brothers created a true flying saucer. (The book includes a photograph of the Hortens' Parabola, an all-wing, parenthesis-shaped craft with rounded edges; the photo is suggestive but its relevance to the story not explained.) We consulted with David Myhra, an aviation expert whose books include four on the Hortens, and who spent several weeks with Reimar Horten at his ranch in Argentina in the 1980s. "The Horten brothers never, ever went to any kind of a circular aircraft design," Myhra said. "There were no flying saucers in the Horten line, at all." Jacobsen spoke with Myhra several times while writing Area 51. When Myhra read the book's claim about the Horten disc, he told us, "I thought, this is a piece of science fiction." Next up: the mutant pubes-cents inside the crashed saucer. Quoting her unnamed source, Jacobsen writes that Stalin tapped Mengele, the infamous "Angel of Death" at the Auschwitz concentration camp, to create the faux aliens "shortly before or immediately after the end of the war," and that in exchange the Soviet leader offered the Nazi safe haven and a place to work, but later reneged on the deal. There's a lack of common sense in this yarn. The cliché that aliens are small, Twizzler-limbed beings with outsized noggins and buggy eyes came along years after Roswell, thanks notably to Steven Spielberg's 1977 film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Until then, they were almost exclusively portrayed as proportionally humanoid, robotic or (in the case of H.G. Wells's 1898 book, The War of the Worlds) tentacled. So why would Stalin place children with surgical makeovers in the saucer? He could have incited a panic, if that had been his aim, using a seasoned Soviet pilot who'd undergone a little nip and tuck. Then there is historical fact. No evidence exists that Mengele had the medical skill to perform such transformations, much less the time to do them. He arrived at Auschwitz in May 1943 and served as chief doctor in the Birkenau subcamp, where he selected incoming prisoners for slave labor or the gas chamber. He also conducted horrific medical experiments, including some on dwarfs and twins. His activities during this time are extremely well-documented. He was not building aliens. With the Red Army nearing Auschwitz in January 1945, Mengele fled to another camp, Gross-Rosen, then retreated farther west with a field hospital unit until his capture by American troops. After several weeks in custody, Mengele was released and devoted himself to keeping his head down, first as a farmhand in Bavaria and later near his hometown of Giinzburg. He stayed there until he slipped off to South America, in 1949. To sum up: According to Mengele biographer Gerald L. Posner, the doctor was fully occupied -- sorting potatoes and baling hay in rural Germany -- during the nearly two years before the supposed Roswell crash. Now, about the saucer's hardware. Jacobsen writes that Stalin wanted to scare the States because he was lagging in the Cold War arms race: Two years away from being able to field an A-bomb, he deployed the saucer as "a warning shot across Truman's bow," she quotes her unnamed source as saying -- a nudge to the U.S. president that the Soviets had technological tricks of their own. This raises several questions of logic. If the Soviets were struggling with nuclear fission, how likely is it that they'd mastered the EMF technology that supposedly drove the saucer? If they had mastered EMF, why would they crash or land the saucer on U.S. soil, thereby making a gift of the technology to their greatest rival? If both the U.S. and Russia have had EMF technology for 60-plus years, why are we still flying old-school, fuel-chugging planes? Why did we use Hueys in Vietnam? Why didn't we use EMF to power the space shuttle? But onward: Jacobsen writes that her unnamed source was one of five engineers to eyeball the crashed saucer at a secret research facility in the desert in 1951, four years before the Groom Lake air base opened a short distance away. He saw Cyrillic lettering "in a ring running around the inside of the craft," she reports. There were controls in the cockpit, but the craft was apparently flown by remote control. We called Peter W. Merlin, an aviation historian who's written much about Groom Lake, including X-Plane Crashes: Exploring Experimental, Rocket Plane, and Spycraft Incidents, Accidents and Crash Sites. (It's safe to say he knows his stuff about the downing of some very unusual flying machines.) Merlin shared with us an October 1952 aerial photo of the area shot by the U.S. Geological Survey. The photo, he noted, "shows nothing there" but an abandoned World War II airstrip. "All the well-documented historical narratives show that Area 51 -- not by that name, but as a facility -- was built in 1955," Merlin said. As for who was piloting the alleged saucer: Wireless, remote-control technology was just a few years old in 1947; it wasn't yet available on American TVs. So does it make sense that the Soviets would have used it to guide an aircraft from thousands of miles away? When we first spoke with Jacobsen, three days after the book's release, we asked whether she realized this story might strike some people as "pretty nutty" (our exact words). She answered that she did. "The whole thing sounds so preposterous, [but] the reason I chose to include it in my book is that I believe in the veracity of my source," she said. "I've worked with him now for two years." Mr. X is a man with impeccable credentials and a storied career, she told us: He'd devoted his adult life to serving the Manhattan Project and the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), much of it as an engineer for defense contractor EG&G. "I've examined his Atomic Energy Commission awards and certificates," she said. "I examined his war record, his military records, his medical records." She wouldn't tell us his name, of course. She'd promised to stay mum about his identity and those of the four now-deceased engineers with whom he'd worked. Jacobsen said she realized that using an unnamed source had earned her some skepticism, but argued it was "part of journalism, historically." Skepticism or no, Jacobsen's book was enjoying a lot of friendly press at the time. Within a few days of our conversation, the hosts of CNN's American Morning said they "couldn't put it down" and found it "riveting." MSNBC's Morning Joe heralded the book's runaway sales. The New York Times praised Jacobsen's "dogged devotion to her research" and called the Roswell passages "a hasty-sounding addendum to an otherwise straightforward investigative book about aviation and military history." But the tide turned. On May 26, when Jacobsen appeared on ABC's Nightline, reporter Bill Weir challenged her Soviet saucer tale, asking, "How can you believe this?" He requested to meet her unnamed source, and did so. Weir reported that he was as esteemed as Jacobsen had described, but Weir opted to keep the man's name and image off the air because he'd seemed "confused." Meanwhile, speculation about the identity of Jacobsen's source proliferated on the Web. Well, actually, on dozens of websites. The man in question figures prominently in Jacobsen's book, and, indeed, the details she put down about him jibe with her descriptions of Mr. X to us and to others. So we phoned his home. His wife answered. Upon hearing what we wanted, she referred us to a publicist at Little, Brown and Company, Area 51's publisher. She then said that her husband was in the hospital after suffering a fall, and that she'd take our number to him. "I doubt if he'll talk," she said. "Everybody says he's the man, but he'll say he's not." "Is he?" we asked. "No, no, 1 believe that he's not," she said. "This whole thing has just got out of hand." He never called, and our subsequent attempts to contact him have been unsuccessful. When we spoke to Jacobsen again in early June, we mentioned that Mr. X's name had been bandied about on the Internet. "I imagine there's a zillion websites that are speculating about who my source might be," she said, "but I have no idea. I don't read them, and I don't know about any of that." We asked whether it had occurred to her, while talking with her source, that his story had some problems. "If I ever had a question like that of the source, I asked him," she replied. We asked whether she'd come to harbor any misgivings about his account since. "I believe that what the source told me is true, to him," she replied. "In other words, everything that he told me, I believe in his veracity as an individual." Her book's endnotes, she reminded us, did raise "the possibility that perhaps some of the information that he was told could have been misinformation." Her source didn't think so, however, and was "surprised and upset by the idea that no one believes this," she said. In our second conversation, Jacobsen complained that her critics were fixated on "the last seven pages" before the epilogue, rather than the hundreds previous chronicling the impressive military aircraft development at Groom Lake. And indeed, the most sensational elements of the Roswell-Soviet-Mengele bombshell come in an ending that took the Roadrunners by surprise. "The general reaction of most of the guys I know is: Wow. We didn't see this one coming," Roger Andersen said. "We really got back-doored on that last chapter." Roadrunners vice president Harry A. Martin offered a more forceful assessment. "We don't go along with that crap," he said. "I don't appreciate it, really." Retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Tony Bevacqua, who flew the U-2, called the book's last chapter "flat-out unbelievable." Francis J. Murray branded it "BS." Some Groom Lake alums, mindful that the book contained their story, decided they'd back it anyway, and have appeared with the author at book signings and TV tapings. Barnes is among them, though he said he was "horrified" when he read Area 51 and regretted introducing Jacobsen to some of her other sources. On Memorial Day he made the blog post decrying Jacobsen's "literary crimes and errors." (He has since removed the page containing that quote.) Meanwhile, Jacobsen is unwavering. "Everybody has opinions about what journalists write, but 1 stand by everything I wrote in the book," she said. She added that she'd met with Mr. X since the book came out, and that he was "clear on everything I've written." None of the foregoing should be taken to mean that the text preceding Area 51 's big finish is free of kinks. For one thing, the Soviet flying-saucer story is not restricted to seven pages: The groundwork for it is laid throughout the preceding narrative, beginning on page 4. And the sections that do pass for straight history include material about nuclear tests that took place in the Nevada desert, but not at Area 51; the secret base had nothing to do with them. What's more, the straight history, nuke and Area 51 stuff alike, is sprinkled with errors. A 1957 nuclear safety test is labeled the first of its kind (page 111), when four similar tests had occurred in 1955 and 1956, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. The same test is described as research into "the dirty bomb menace" that "posed a growing threat to the internal security of the country" (page 100), when it was really aimed at collecting data on the extent of nuclear contamination that would result if the detonating charge failed to cause an atomic explosion -- again, according to the DOE. That's just a sampling of the 35 errors that Peter Merlin found in the book. Perhaps the biggest mistake appears on the dust jacket and again in the prologue, where Jacobsen says "the U.S. government has never admitted [Area 51] exists." In truth, various agencies have acknowledged the base's existence. Evidence can easily be found on the Web, where links abound to January 1996 news-conference footage, captured by KTNV-TV, the ABC affiliate in Las Vegas, of then defense secretary William Perry. "We do have a military operation going on at Groom Lake, highly classified and highly important to U.S. security," he says. Also, in the mid-1990s, federal lawsuits brought by former workers from the area alleging that they'd been exposed to hazardous waste on the job forced President Bill Clinton to acknowledge the "Air Force's operating location near Groom Lake." Ultimately, the base's presence has been an open secret from the start. Merlin has turned up government maps, none secret, bearing the "51" or "Area 51" designation. And in May 1955, the AEC's Las Vegas field office issued a press release announcing its construction. A month after the book's publication, we traded email with John Parsley, the Little, Brown and Company editor who handled Area 5 1. He did not answer some of our questions: on whether he knew Mr. X's identity; on his (Parsley's) methodology in deciding whether an unnamed source is reliable; and on whether he took a role in corroborating the book's assertions or left that to Jacobsen. (As the company's executive director of publicity, Nicole Dewey, explained: "We do not, as a matter of policy, disclose legal vetting procedures and policies.") "Annie is a seasoned and well-respected journalist, and I'm fully confident in all of her reporting," Parsley said. "The book always promised to be a groundbreaking work on a fascinating place, and it is -- just as it is a tribute to each man who worked on his particular part of the base." "Tribute" isn't the word some Road-runners use to describe the book, and, as it happens, we ran across something that made pieces of the saucer-teen yarn seem not so groundbreaking, either. The July 1956 edition of the magazine Astounding Science Fiction contains a short story by James Blish, a fairly popular writer in his day. "Tomb Tapper" is about a strange craft that crashes in a small town in upstate New York, and that might be extraterrestrial; the people who find it can't tell whether it's Soviet or from outer space. They break into the hull to find the pilot, dying in the cockpit. The pilot's helmet falls off. Lying before them is a blond-haired girl, maybe 8 years old. To be sure, any similarity to the account of Jacobsen's unnamed source is coincidental, because Blish's story is fiction. It's fantasy. And as Jacobsen states on Area 51's cover: "This book is a work of nonaction. The stories I tell in this narrative arc real." pm THE AUTHOR ASSERTS THAT JOSEF MENGELE WAS WORKING FOR SOVIET BOSS JOSEF STALIN, WHO NEEDED THE MUTANTS FOR A SPECIAL PROJECT: SCARING THE DAYLIGHTS OUT OF AMERICA WITH A FAKE ALIEN VISITATION. YES, IT WAS ALL A HOAX, THE MOST LAVISH PRANK IN HISTORY. Never mind the conspiracy theories. The hype surrounding Area 51 -- about alien autopsies, reverse-engineered spacecraft and more -- often obscures the impressive feats of aeronautical engineering accomplished there. Though its just a small part of a sprawling complex that includes a nuclear test site and a military base, Area 51 has had an outsize reputation since its inception, in 1955. AMERICA'S NOTORIOUSLY SECRETIVE MILITARY COMPOUND RETURNS TO THE LIMELIGHT, THANKS TO A NEW BOOK THAT MAKES FANTASTIC CLAIMS ABOUT ITS PURPORTED UFO AND ALIEN PAST. T.D. Barms (above) was a radar expert at Area 51; today, he is the president of Roadrunners Internationale, an organization of men who worked at the base. Air Force officers displayed the remains of a weather balloon (left) found near Roswell, N.M., in the summer of 1947 to quell UFO stories. Area 51 initially received some good press, but its claim that the alleged Roswell UFO was a Soviet craft with mutant teenagers aboard made us wonder: Did those critics actually read the thing? Testing of nuclear bombs, including the 74-kiloton Hood device, which was detonated on July 5,1957, took place at Area 9 of the Nevada Test Site, near Area 51. Here, the bomb is held aloft by a balloon. SR-71 BLACKBIRD: The U.S. Air Force's high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft flew faster than Mach 3, outrunning most surface-to-air missiles. The squat profile, a special skin and a cooler exhaust plume were intended to thwart detection by radar or infrared sensors. The SR-71 was not tested at Area 51, but the plane's design and engines were identical to those of the CIA's A-12 Oxcart (below). u-2 Nickname: Dragon Lady. It's hard to fly and harder to land, but the images it captured from 70,000 feet were worth the risk to pressure-suited pilots. The U-2 is still flying, 56 years after its introduction, proving its ingenuity and utility. MIG-21F In Area 51's Have Doughnut project, a Soviet-built MIG-21F acquired in 1968 was evaluated and used by U.S. pilots in combat test flights. Have Doughnut was hugely successful, leading to the famed Red Flag and TOPGUN training programs. A-12 OXCART First flown in 1962, the CIA's A-12 broke the Mach 3 barrier in 1963. A fatal crash that year was painstakingly covered up and later fueled conspiracy theories. ~~~~~~~~ By EARL SWIFT from Popular Mechanics Sept 1, 2011