James DiEugenio

I find this quote by Marguerite Oswald to be telling: "The proud and perfect Quaker ... I keep saying she is a fraud and xxxx; she is evil, and selfish and the cause of it all. I would wipe up the floor with her." I love this one Gene.

It's the meat of the whole enchilada. And the ghosts of the Rosenbergs are the wild cards in the deck. Great. I assume this will be in your next volume?

But not only was Allen Dulles quite aware of the liabilities of DeMohrenschidlt, he was also aware of the problem with the Paines. Which Richard Russell already had been sniffing out. So he made sure that Russell's suspicions would not come to dominate the Commission. For in December of 1963, the FBI did an interview with Frederick Osborne Jr and his wife Nancy. They testified to the Paines' "religiosity, good character, and innocence in having anything to do with the assassination of President Kennedy." From Philadelphia, how could they know that? Well, Frederick's father was a close associate of Allen Dulles. They were both Princeton alums. In fact, in the Osborne papers, there is correspondence between him and the Dulles brothers. Osborne helped Allen create the Crusade for Freedom, which resembled Radio Free Europe, which it merged with in 1962. In December, just days after the WC was created, was Allen Dulles already creating a propaganda front to help benefit the Paines? Even before the WC started investigating anything? It does appear that way doesn't it?

Now, let us go to Allen Dulles. As most of us know, Dulles was well aware of the connection between him and the Paines, through Mary Bancroft. As noted in my video, he would actually kid about it in private. But it really was no joking matter with him. Because he was well aware that this could lead back to him. In 1954, a young petroleum lawyer named Herbert Itkin met with Dulles. Dulles referred him to George DeMohrenschidlt. Yet, Dulles knew the Baron well enough to refer to him under an alias he used at the time, namely Philip Harbin. Itkin's relationship went on with George for a number of years. George's brother Dimitri was also quite friendly with Allen Dulles. In fact, Bruce Adamson found continuing correspondence between the two that went back to 1953. Dimitri was involved with Radio Free Europe, a Dulles pet project, and also with a journal called Russian Review, also CIA related. That journal was co-edtied by Dimitri and a man named William Chamberlin, a conservative journalist and columnist for the Wall Street Journal. Chamberlin was also a close friend and colleague of former CIA officer Bill Buckley. Carol and Adamson found out that Chamberlin was an informal advisor to Dulles on the WC. One of his functions was to inform Allen on how to steer the WC form running into the intel ties of the two brothers, George and Dimitri. As anyone can see from reading the WR, Chamberlin did a good job.

Now, let us go to a very curious piece of evidence. One which Priscilla Johnson used to great dramatic effect in her book, Marina and Lee. Ruth maintains that on the evening of the 21st, about 9 PM, she came down to her garage and she noticed that the light was still on, something she would never do. Of course, PJM rerunning the WC, would have us think that geez, that dirty fink Oswald came down and picked up that MC rifle that he had stashed there and was going to use to kill JFK the next day. When in fact, all it proves is that Ruth went to the garage that night. But think of how absurd the WC/PJM implication it is on its face: that LHO would sneak down and put together the whole package with the paper wrapping etc, the dissembled rifle, etc, and then he would go back up to the room where he was watching TV with Marina? I mean really. Try and sell that to a jury. But the WC bought this tall tale and then PJM printed it in her book. As Carol wrote in her "Suspicious Characters" article in Probe, this was contradicted by Marina's testimony which said Oswald was in their room at that time and they were watching TV; and he then fell asleep. Further, Michael also testified that he would often stop by to pick up the tools in the garage that he had left while he was living in Grand Prairie during their separation. Hmm. That was in her first piece, and that caught my attention for sure.

Ed, that is a really interesting find about Naushon Island and Straus. I mean, can that really be a mind boggling coincidence?

As noted earlier, a very interesting transfer occurred after Marina was in detention at the Inn of the Six Flags. Ruth Paine began to move off stage--that is as far as direct contact went. As we have seen, the indirect contact, as a conduit of evidence incriminating Oswald, Ruth was very active and would be for months to come. But as far as personal contact went, the relationship began to dry up. Who filled the vacuum? It looks to be Priscilla Johnson. (I have only met Marina twice. The first time I wanted to talk to her about PJM. No dice.) By August of 1964, Priscilla was essentially co-habitating with Marina. The ostensible excuse was she wanted to write a book about the Oswald couple. Apparently, in doing research for this book--which would not materialize for well over a decade--Priscilla took up where Ruth left off. Recall, this is August of 1964. Its over nine months after the assassination. The DPD has cased Oswald's personal belongings thoroughly. The SS and FBI have been in constant contact with Marina, this included showing her certain pieces of evidence, like cameras. If anything was left out, Ruth Paine had an uncanny ability to find it. But there was something that apparently Ruth could not find. But Priscilla did. Two Transportes del Norte bus tickets. Looking like they had just been purchased. This one even disturbed Wesley Liebeler. He complained that this would look highly irregular, this finding of key evidence on a controversial point almost ten months later, and just a few weeks before the WC would go to press. Now, as I said, it appears that just as the CIA associated George DeMohrenschildt brought the Paines into contact with the Oswalds, as the Paines drifted out, PJM came into Marina's life. And kept her tied up with a book contract for something like 14 years. Just a coincidence of course that her book--a WC rerun--came out during the HSCA, right? At the same time that Angleton's acolyte, Ed Epstein's book, also fingering Oswald, came out. As Newman discovered, the CIA felt very confident that PJM was in their pocket. They decided not to formally hire her, although she seems to have wanted that to be the case. (As John told me, "Jim, she was literally throwing herself at them.") But they did classify her as a witting asset. Well, when Marina was called by Jim Garrison before his grand jury, his office wanted to explore the relationship and how it ended between her and Ruth. Marina told the grand jury she was advised by the Secret Service to stay away from Ruth. Because she was "Sympathizing with the CIA." She was then asked to elaborate on this point. The following is from the Douglass book, (p. 173) MARINA: Seems like she had friends over there and it would be bad for me if people find out connection between me and Ruth and CIA. QUESTION: In other words, you were left with the distinct impression that she was in some way connected with the CIA? MARINA: Yes.

It seems that even though the Dallas police had the run of the house for a couple of days, they somehow kept on missing things. Although they did seize a cloth zipper bag [CE 126], it had no indications that it left the country. But somehow, some way, Ruth kept on finding things that the FBI and/or WC needed. But the DPD had overlooked. In this case, it was an olive colored canvas bag. This bag had remnants of a Trailways bus marker and a chalk mark on the side which said 9/26. Presto, Marina is wrong. Unbekownst to her, Oswald was in Mexico. But Wesley Liebeler ran into a wee bit of trouble with this particular late arrival from Ruth. The WC said they had a witness who saw Oswald going to a bus station in New Orleans. Even though there was no evidence he purchased a ticket there, they went with this witness. The witness, Eric Rogers, said he thought Oswald had two bags. And he thought the cloth zipper bag, the one the DPD found, was one he had. But he did not at all recognize the olive colored canvas bag, the one Ruth produced. The one with the identifying markings. It then got worse. With Ruth's late arriving bag, the WC placed two bags in Oswald's hands upon leaving New Orleans. But the problem now became that first, according to the Mexican bus company Oswald only had one bag. This was a serious problem that David Slawson, for one fretted about. After all, he and Coleman had the task of getting Oswald to Mexico and back. (BTW, getting him back was even worse than getting him there.) Second, when Oswald--or whoever was impersonating him-- arrived at the Hotel Del Comercio, he arrived with a BROWN zippered bag. This is now a third bag, and it does not match the other two. Third, the FBI could never find any person or any record from the hotel that confirmed that Oswald ever had the olive colored bag with him. Same applies for the return home. No one and no record ever confirmed this olive bag with the markings on it. The one produced by Ruth.

Now, as most of us know, another problem that J. Edgar Hoover had with the whole CIA scenario of Oswald being in Mexico was how on earth did Oswald get there? Officially of course, Oswald did not drive. But if someone actually drove for him, then that created a problem. It would mess up the whole image that the FBI and WC were creating: Oswald was a lonely sociopath, with almost no real friends or acquaintances. (Which, of course, we all know is BS today.) Well, you know what else was written as a note on the dictionary found at the Paine household 12 days later? You guessed it: Get bus tickets. But there was a huge problem with this. One that was almost insurmountable. There was virtually no physical evidence to put him on a bus to Mexico. Hoover's agents went almost crazy trying to find a ticket seller who sold him the tickets. They canvassed three cities in their almost half mad attempt to find someone, anyone who could identify Oswald as buying tickets to Mexico. Hoover must have been getting more and more frustrated as the results came back negative. And this is what I think drove him to write the marginalia saying that the CIA had sold him a bill of goods on Oswald going to Mexico. But he had to come up with something, anything or else the results could overturn what he and the WC had already dreamed up. Well a few weeks later, Ruth Paine tried to help. Again.

Thanks, and I will get to Allen Dulles. And also Ed, please join in, since I know ROKC has done some good work on the Paines. As seen from the video clip above, the Paines were always obliging of going on TV and doing their bit to caricature Lee Oswald. If you have not seen that ersatz and completely bogus London production where Bugliosi called in Ruth, you should. Ruth is so convinced that Oswald is the lone gunman that it is almost metaphysical with her. Now, in addition to the WC fairy tale, another writer that the Paines were utilized by was Priscilla Johnson. According to Peter Whitmey, Priscilla was Richard Helms' favorite author on the JFK case. Which follows quite naturally since, as John Newman revealed, the CIA considered her a willing asset of theirs. And also, as far as I know, there were still some pages classified on her when the ARRB disbanded. Once Marina was detained at the Inn of the Six Flags, she was more or less cordoned off by the Secret Service. And she was worked on by them and the FBI to alter her story about several things e.g. the rifle, Mexico City, the cameras the Oswald family had. (This is an important point already touched on and we will return to it.) A very interesting thing happened when the WC was winding down. Ruth Paine was eased out of the picture as Marina's escort, and Priscilla was moved in. If one reads the record of Marina's first Secret Service interview, which was filed officially on the 29th, you will see that she denied that Oswald ever went to Mexico City. In fact, this got so bad that she was almost taunting the Secret Service agents about this issue. She would bring it up even before they asked about it because she knew what they wanted to hear in that regard, and she would preempt them with a negative reply. But some powerful force wanted Oswald in Mexico. On December 4th, the Secret Service visited Ruth Paine. And guess what? After at least two visits by the police for full house searches, Ruth was still producing articles of evidence that those Keystone Kops somehow overlooked. Even though the original DPD inventory reached into the hundreds of items. But it was even worse than that. Because now, more than one week after the murder, she had the marvelous good fortune and the intuition to find articles of evidence that would counter Marina's denial of Oswald being in Mexico City. For she now produced a "rules for Betting" card used at a thoroughbred racetrack. Also a Spanish English Dictionary with a handwritten notation "watch Jai lai game". There was also six picture postcards with no writing or stamps but which depicted Mexican Tableaux. In the dictionary was written, among other things, "buy Silver Bracelet". Well, Ruth produced the bracelet also, with the name Marina produced on the name plate. Even the WC admitted that the last was not relevant since it could have been bought anywhere at any time. Further Oswald never had the proper attire to attend the Jai Lai game. And although the FBI did an extensive inquiry, they could find no witnesses or evidence to place him at a horse race track. Also, why buy postcards from Mexico if you are not going to mail them? To look at the pictures? Now, as John Newman so memorably revealed in his very important book Oswald and the CIA, on the day of the assassination, James Angleton's office released information that Oswald had not only been in Mexico City, but he had visited both the Cuban and Russian embassies. Well what else did the dictionary have as a note written on it? You guessed it: "phone embassy."

The scene is set: the Oswalds are separated so that the Paine home now serves as the repository for much of the evidence the WC and FBI will use to convict the defendant. Now, Len Osanic has posted tomorrow's show already for BOR. http://www.blackopradio.com/pod/black763a.mp3 Please listen to the segment from 11:48 until the 32:00 mark. Because this is a very good example of the evidence tampering that took place at the Paiine garage from the time Oswald was in detention until way after he was killed. Except this was an example of negating a piece of evidence. In this case, Hoover wanted to get rid of the MInox Camera Oswald owned. He understood just how important that was to revealing Oswald's true identity as an intel agent. But the police had fouled the nest by picking it up and putting it on their property list. Therefore good ole J. Edgar told both Bardwell Odum and the Dallas SAC Gordon Shanklin to first, make Oswald's Minox, the one that the police had confiscated, disappear. And secondly, confuse that with another Minox camera that the Paines could produce. Please listen carefully, and you will see how a little playlet was enacted after Oswald's murder so that the FBI could keep the cover story about Oswald intact. Hoover knew exactly who to go to for the actors in his playlet, in fact he literally told his troops to interview the Paines. In my opinion, this was the best article Carol ever wrote.

But before we get to that end game, let us add in something that Jim Douglass so beautifully portrayed in his fine volume JFK and the Unspeakable. (In his autographed copy to me, he wrote that he went to school for his book by reading Probe. Therefore what he wrote there about the Paines he must owe to Carol.) In addition to predicting that she would pick up Marina and bring her to live with her in the fall of 1963, Ruth did something else to put Oswald in a pretty bad predicament that fall. Let me quote from DB 2, p. 163: "The Warren Report states that Ruth Paine heard through a friend that there was a job opening at the Texas School Book Depository. Ruth called supervisor Roy Truly at the Depository to arrange a meeting for Oswald. She then told Oswald about this arrangement that day, October 14. Lee interviewed on the 15th, and started work on the 16th. The Report tells us that the Oswalds were elated with his new job. What the report does not say is that an offer of a better paying job came in before Oswald started work at the Depository. When Oswald returned form Mexico, he visited the Texas Employment Commission. In reply to that visit, Robert Adams phoned the Paine residence on October 15 with a better job offer for Oswald than the one he took. Adams said he spoke with someone there about a permanent position as cargo handler at Trans Texas Airport, a job that paid about 100 dollars more per month than the Depository. Adams said that he was told Oswald was not at home. He left a message that Oswald should call him about the job. Adams called again the next morning. This time he was told that Oswald had taken a different job. Adams therefore crossed him off his list. When Ruth Paine was asked about this phone call from Adams, she first said she did not recall it, but she eventually did. Yet she said she heard of it through Lee Oswald. Oswald informed her that he had high hopes for it but it had "fallen through". This does not coincide with what Adams said. He tried to notify Oswald twice, since the job was still available. The job offer from Adams paid about 30 per cent more than what Oswald earned at the Depository. Therefore if Oswald had known about it, why would he not have taken it? Especially since Marina testified that Lee was not satisfied with the Depository job. He was searching through the newspapers for something better. Needless to say, if whoever had talked to Adams had told Oswald about the offer, he very likely would not have been on the motorcade route one month later." And I am sure Greg Parker can add some interesting stuff about this episode if he is not saving it for his book. Stay tuned, there is reams more to come. The toothpste is all over the floor.

Prior to the Hewett-Jones-LaMonica work in Probe, there really had not been any systematic or categoric overview of the Paines in the JFK literature. There had only been certain hints or glimmers of what these two people were really all about and who they actually were. I can name Peter Scott and Tony Summers in that regard. But as I said this was just small scale stuff. What Carol did, assisted by Barbara and Steve, was to show that the picture of the Paines as drawn by the Warren Commission was completely foreshortened. In fact, it was foreshortened almost as much with them as it was with Oswald. Now, who was the only man on the WC who understood this? Who else? Richard Russell. He commented to the effect that, Ruth and Michael must be the Good Samaritans to end all Good Samaritans. In other words, their intense interest in the Oswalds seemed to be a bit beyond the pale. As noted above, Ruth was already teaching Russian, and if she needed to brush up on it, I mean, were the Paines not in the middle of the White Russian community? As I also noted above, what kind of new acquaintance to a married couple tried to get that couple to split up by having the wife move in with her? This is not the stuff of William Penn is it? Yet, as Carol noted, this is what Ruth tried to do, within about three weeks of meeting the Oswalds. So, to some, this appears to have been her objective. Which, as we know, she succeeded at. As noted above, she told her relatives on her quasi cross country trip that she would return Marina to live with her once she picked her up in New Orleans. As noted, if this was her goal, she succeeded in achieving it. As we shall see, the effects of that on Lee Oswald were disastrous.

Let us start with a video segment that some of you have seen, but many have not since it was produced at the fiftieth. And many of you have joined up since. I did some segments, and consulted on others, of the excellent Fifty Reasons for Fifty Years series by Len Osanic and Jeff Carter. This one got some really live feedback, and I owe most of the info to the Hewett, Jones, LaMonica series. Plus Len and Jeff did a nice job producing it. As good and as info filled as it is, it could easily have been twice as long.

As most readers here will understand, I don't like posting on any thread with Paul Trejo. Since I think he is a zealot. A zealot is a person who is so focused and obsessive on one goal that he loses sight of what the overall objective is. For instance, winning in Vietnam became such an obsession for Johnson and Nixon, that they were willing to destroy the better part of three countries--Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam-- and kill over three million people in order to do so. Nixon connoted in this vein, when, by his own admission on tape and to others, he said he understood the war could not be won. This was in 1969. Paul Trejo is so obsessed with CIA involvement with the murder of President Kennedy that he doesn't really weigh and measure evidence in a careful and proper way. Therefore, the work of say John Newman is wrong in Oswald and the CIA. Therefore the work of Dr. Phil Melanson is wrong in Spy Saga. The work of Lisa Pease is false about James Angleton. The work of Mark Lane is wrong in Plausible Denial. The fine book, Nexus, by Larry Hancock is faulty also. DA Jim Garrison was also up a tree. David Talbot, who just wrote a fine book on Allen Dulles, is also wrong, since far from being a possible conspirator or a cover up artist, Allen Dulles was actually a great American in Paul's view. I could go on and on. But what does Paul say really happened? Edwin Walker was the real CEO of the Kennedy killing. Ernie Lazar has done some very fine work debunking Paul's latest Rube Goldberg contraption. And I will be doing some further work in analyzing a book on the subject. I predict none of this will even slow Paul down or even cause him to think a bit about his position. Because zealots don't do that kind of stuff. Or they would not be zealots. But here I want to attend to an issue that Paul has made personal between himself, me and Greg Parker. And also someone who cannot defend herself, since she is not part of the research community anymore. The last time I talked to Carol Hewett she was shutting down her law practice after 30 years, and getting ready to move from Florida. She was not active in the research community anymore and had a hard time even locating her files. Let me explain. In the midst of her milestone series on the Paines for Probe--in which she was assisted by Barbara Lamonica and Steve Jones--Carol was afflicted with cancer. She had to stop practicing law. She underwent chemotherapy treatment, which was extremely expensive, even with health insurance. The chemotherapy was so powerful that it even altered her appearance. To show what I mean: after this treatment, I saw her once at a conference. She was not presenting, but she approached me to congratulate me on a presentation I had given. In a truly embarrassing moment I had to ask who she was. When she said it was Carol, I don't recall if I turned crimson, but that is the feeling I recall. She looked that different in every way: her body and her face and her hair. I really regret that happened to her, not just because of the personal and professional hardship it placed on her. But in a selfish way, because she was never as productive after that illness. When she first started writing for us, she was one of the most prolific writers we had. She was not just good on the Paines, but she was also quite interested in John Masen, George Nonte, James Hosty and in the firearms and ballistics evidence in general. In fact, she wrote an article about the sound waves produced by partially silenced rifles that was an absolute classic. How good of a researcher was she? She even got a manual on the subject that was produced by Mitch Werbell's company. At that time, she was so productive and so immersed in the topic of the JFK case that she said she wanted to write an article for each issue. That would have meant six articles a year. I very much looked forward to this since her articles were both original, and insightful. And they were footnoted. Once she got cancer, that was largely dissipated. I feel we all got shortchanged. Because we did. Carol's work directly caused Thomas Mallon to write his cover up book, Mrs. Paine's Garage. That is how worried the other side got about what she was digging up. Second, her work stopped Sixty Minutes from doing a special on Judith Baker. That is how pungent she was. As I said, Carol is out of the business now. So I will do my best to show how valuable her work was. But let me say off the top, her work directly influenced Jim Douglass and what he wrote about the Paines in JFK and the Unspeakable. And that baton was picked up by me in Destiny Betrayed and Reclaiming Parkland, and will be continued by Greg Parker in Volume 3 of his series. Due to the above efforts, the toothpaste is out of the tube on the Paines. It won't go back in.

Paul: You know, you are sounding like a broken record. Everyone knows what you are going to write before you write it. First, you went out and bought my book, Destiny Betrayed. You did that for one reason. You wanted to riff through the book for the purpose of excerpting the stuff I wrote on the Paines in order to extract it and criticize it. You then went out and bought the Probe CD, and you did exactly the same thing. So you spent about fifty dollars to buy a book and a CD. Those two works are about 1000 pages of material. And what did you do? You rushed right for the material on the Paines and ignored everything else. This is a man not with an agenda, but a jihad. And BTW, your opinion on the work above is not accurate. But I will get to that later. But you will not like it at all.

To which I say: Pamela read the Lopez Report. You will get the raw data there. Instead of Trejo's spin.

So that is his source for all this, the Mallon book. OMG. That book was directly inspired by the work of Hewett, Lamonica and Jones. Just as the book Case Closed was inspired by Oliver Stone's film JFK.

I will be dealing with your attack on Carol at length and in depth. She is retired and out of the field. But the difference is you were vouching for the accuracy of everything you said as being fact checked and according to Hoyle, when proven wrong, you then did a soft-shoe and tried to say you were recalling one source, while the whole time you acted as if you had Ruth Paine's testimony in front of you

I would do a soft-shoe in large print and try to change the subject also. You just got caught with your pants down.

The point is that you have stated that every word you write is thought out and checked in advance. Then you wrote this: I was going by my recollection of material from the book, "MRS.PAINE'S GARAGE," evidently. ​This is the kind of material you use to document your posts? And you did not even reread it, but based what you wrote on memory. ​Anyone familiar at all with the Paines and with Mallon understands just who he is, and what his book was about. Wow.

Ashton Gray's ideas about Watergate were pure malarkey. I tend to agree with Pat on this. As per this, weren't the idea that McKnight had about the location hotly debated?

I would say the document is pretty good as evidence. Let us await Paul's reply.

Well, not knowing any Russians in New Orleans is not exactly the same as not knowing Russian. Although granted, it makes perfect sense if you wanted to learn or brush up on your Russian. So let us see what Paul comes up with.

Paul, did Ruth also say the opposite? But then, why would she say two things that are opposed to each other?