Anthony Thorne

Jim - dunno. John felt like he was on to something.

Quote

That sounds really interesting. The club is named Northwood Club in Dallas?

No, and digging the info back up, I was inexact. Northwoods comes from the club's location, with Northwood being a name and locale likely familiar to the club's members.

Northwood in Baltimore, Maryland, from Wikipedia.

Quote

Northwood is a neighborhood in the northeastern section of Baltimore, Maryland in the United States. Northwood is served by the New Northwood and the Original Northwood community associations. The area is also home to the Northwood Shopping Center and the Northwood Baseball League.

The Burning Tree Club in Maryland, from Wikipedia.

Quote

Burning Tree Club is a private, all-male golf club in Bethesda, Maryland. The course at Burning Tree has been played by numerous presidents, foreign dignitaries, high-ranking executive officials, members of Congress, and military leaders.

Newman on the Burning Tree Club and Northwoods - this might have been posted here on the forum before.

Quote

 

WHERE DID THE NAME "NORTHWOODS" COME FROM?

When research requires excruciating amounts of time, money and the kind of hard work that is only possible with stamina, progress, when it occurs, is even more rewarding than it would be otherwise. From the files I am currently researching, we can now ascertain the name and location of the secure place where Lemnitzer and his military associates and military-associated outfits like Martin Marietta were able to go meet, golf, dine, and meet clandestinely—knowing that entrance into this highly select male only club was carefully controlled. This fraternity met in Chevy Chase, Maryland, a short drive from the Pentagon—in the Wheaton and Silver Spring area where the name Northwoods IS UBIQUITOUS among the secluded meeting locations of international financial groups like the IMF and World Bank. The military-industrial-security fraternity to which I refer met often at the then super-exclusive Burning Tree Golf Club in Chevy Chase (as well as at a retreat in the Bahamas). At the time, the Burning Tree entrance fee—by invitation only—was $75,000, and the monthly membership fee was $500.

In the attached extract from JCS Chairman Lemnitzer’s Daily Log, the name “Geo. Bunker” belonged to the then Chairman of the Martin-Marietta Company--George M. Bunker--that manufactured, among other items, the Titan missiles and the Jupiter missiles deployed in Turkey. Delk Simpson, Sr., chief of protocol for Bunker’s Martin-Marietta colleague Air Force General Samuel E. Anderson, entertained an elite group of about thirty active duty senior officers for Martin-Marietta. When Lemnitzer (after JFK fired him as CJCS) replaced General Norstad as Commander-in-Chief of Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), General Anderson was Lemnitzer’s Deputy for Air. The name “Holtner” in the attached 7/14/62 golf “conference,” is elsewhere identified in Lemnitzer’s Daily logs as Major General Holtner; he might be identical with Major General J. Stanley Holtoner, who was assigned to the Pentagon in 1959 to the newly created Office of the Director of Defense Research and Engineering, and remained in that job at least up to September 1962.

 

After Newman posted the above, I saw that a private history of the club and its members was floating around, pictured below (and I see it's two volumes, not three). The two books were selling online for hundreds of dollars. Once alerted to the listing, Newman bought the full set, so if anyone is now well placed to dig into the Burning Tree Club further and investigate the connections, it's him.

I’m following Newman’s work with interest and have read two of the three volumes and a good chunk of the third. I’m reserving judgment until he gets closer to the end of the series though. He has at least two books to go, possibly three depending what he digs up and wants to talk about. Newman did imply in a good Facebook thread that volume four, ARMAGEDDON, is where things really start to dig in deep.

Side note - Newman found the elite country club where various Joint Chiefs and others had hung out as they put together the Northwoods plan - Northwoods was named after the club - and mentioned he was researching it. I Googled the name and found that a three volume history of the club had been privately published among the members decades ago, and sent Newman a link to a case bound copy that was for sale (and they weren’t cheap). Newman bought the books, and anything he found of interest in them will appear in future volumes. He implied it was quite a group of characters who had been meeting there.

The next instalment of Bill Simpich's essay is here.

The Twelve Who Built the Oswald Legend

Part 1: Mother, Meyer, and the Spotters

https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Essay_-_Oswald_Legend_1.html

Worth a read, but the endnotes formatting is somewhat unhelpful - after reading the essay, you get presented with quotes from it, and then have to double back to the main text to find which one went where - and this latest in a 'revised series of articles' is still dated August 2010, so it beats me if it was revised or not.

Robert De Niro spoke twice about this guy’s film on the Today show.
 

Those parts are from several years or a decade ago. I'm personally going to skip re-looking at those as the revised versions are all coming out imminently. 

James. Fair comments. I've had a quick look at an earlier version of Bill Simpich's essay, and it's very heavy on the footnotes and annotations. So - this is taken from what was published as part 10 (Mexico City), several years ago - you'll eventually be getting stuff like this - 

Jim. The article is a preface. From memory the earlier incarnation of the text on another site ended with a long list of links and footnotes and citations. So maybe things are still forthcoming, particularly as we’ll ultimately have thirteen segments to read, and this is the first, and some might prefer seeing all those footnotes gathered in the one spot.

And in your second paragraph you criticise the work for being superficial and not probing matters more deeply - ‘there is so much more to explore’ etc. Simpich clearly agrees with you, as he made this article a preface, and there’s another deeper article coming each week for the next twelve weeks to expand the argument over twelve more essays. So maybe judge those before you dismiss the piece under discussion as glib.

James. I clicked on two links at random. Both were primary sources, scanned documents that said what Bill said they did.

The Corbett Report is pretty reliable stuff, and James Corbett has a decent amount of scepticism about some of the nuttier conspiracies out there. 

Trine Day are teasing a new Epstein book from Whitney Webb.

Quote

Other books on Jeffrey Epstein focus on the depraved nature of his crimes, his wealth and his most famous/politically-connected friends and acquaintances. This book, in contrast, reveals definitively that Epstein's activities were state-sponsored through his intelligence connections.

Rob, I have no gripes with you personally. And I would never suggest Bale is fabricating evidence. That’s not where I was going with my post. I don’t think the other authors I read who cite stuff in footnotes are fabricating things either, usually. But I typically view something as proof if I can see it with my own eyes, such as on the Mary Ferrell site, and I view it as an assertion if someone is asserting it, as Bale did. 
 

Bale translates from various languages, particularity Italian. How’s his French, specifically? Beats me. Are there any languages in the world he isn’t an expert in? And do experts occasionally differ as to the meaning of translations? I’m assuming he wouldn’t have trouble reading the letter in question, but since I’ve never seen the letter I couldn’t draw further conclusions. 
 

If something gets posted in this thread, discussing it a bit is probably still on topic.

Rob - not sure why the fuss. I’m aware of the details about Bale, I’ve read the earlier thesis version of his book (which I’ve linked here and on another forum) and I know about Bale’s recent professional accomplishments. I checked his website after first looking at his thesis nearly two years ago or more.

And I’m not sure if querying parts of the footnote is intended to be a ‘shot across the bow’. My post came about after you wrote that Bale’s paragraph was ‘proof positive’ of something. If you were writing an article or legal document, and someone asked you for proof of something, would you respond “See? Bale said that someone else had once said it, in a footnote.” All that would draw from the original questioner is a shrug.

In Bale’s defense it would be hard to reprint every source material in a work as long as his two volume set, and his original thesis was written something like a quarter of a century ago, so it’s understandable he didn’t make an effort to copy the materials to put it online. But your posts have a lot of assertions - many of which seem to bear fruit when Googled - and this one stood out. Bale has said there’s a series of French language documents in the archives of an Institution somewhere that say various things. When Joan Mellen does this in her footnotes I’ve seen various reviewers and posters pay attention but not treat it as the final word, since it’s unverified. Here in this thread Bale has done the same thing, and you’ve written it’s proof positive of a particular fact.

If you’d simply written ‘according to Bale’, and then qualified it with ‘if true’ when discussing the implications, I wouldn’t have bothered posting what I wrote, as I wouldn’t have had any issues with it. Because if what Bale asserts is true, and various papers in an archive, when translated, do say what he says they do, then yeah, it’s certainly of interest. But at this point the argument asks me to take on faith that (a.) Bale is correct, that (b.) his translation of the documents is accurate, and probably also (c.) that the documents are all sitting in the archives there fine and dandy a quarter century after he first did his research. Again, most of Bale’s book was written in the early 90’s - or earlier, as that’s when he finally presented his thesis, and it probably took a while to put together. So we may be talking closer to 30 years now.

I find the arguments interesting and I like the fact that you’re clearly inclined to dig deep into various sources, but there’s a reason the Gladio story remains inconclusive, and it’s largely because guys like Philip Wilan and some others only treat as verified stuff that they’re able to verify, and they make note of the other stuff that they haven’t been able to verify - in footnotes or interviews - as either being interesting, or suggestive, or they just note that another author has made the claim while they haven’t been able to verify it themselves. If you’d lean towards doing the same occasionally - and possibly you have in some of your much longer posts, as there were a couple of enormous ones that I confess I didn’t finish - I’d have no problems at all. And I don’t really have any problems with what you’re writing now, either. But maybe you could treat the assertions by Bale the same way every other author, even the good ones, generally gets treated, and not tell us something has been 100% conclusively verified when no-one has had a chance to verify it other than him. And by treating it as an assertion - of interest, sure - I don’t feel the need to dial up Bale on the phone and ask him if he’s got a photocopy to loan out from his personal archives, thanks.

Working backwards, I'm not sure if I can draw this

Quote

I mean, this is proof positive that William F. Buckley Jr. was in the 1962-1963 time period, in direct contact with Jean Parvulesco

from documentation that says stuff like this - 

Quote

All of these French-language documents can be found in the Hoover Institution Archives, James Burnham collection, Box 10, folder (Subject File) 5: OAS “Charlemagne.” 

It's great that Bale says various documents squirrelled away somewhere might possibly say what he says they do, but why do we have to pay a visit to the Hoover Institution to check it? Bale indicates that he's seen the documents. Wasn't he allowed to make copies? Other authors have no problem reprinting sources, either in the back of the book, or online. Here, Bale has a long detailed paragraph dwelling on the contents of letters that he says exists deep in some archive somewhere, but he doesn't provide the source material and offers no explanation in that section as to why he couldn't. The only proof I gained from that paragraph is that Bale has said something about materials we can't easily check.

If you run with that idea - and it certainly sounds possible - it's really something to think of the planning behind Tippit being one of the shooters, and then him being killed minutes after the assassination. Dead men tell no tales, obviously. But if that's what happened, it also makes you wonder who behind the scenes was a friend of Tippit's, and who wasn't.

If Tippit was a featured shooter who was killed right afterwards, it would be another reminder to everyone to keep their mouths shut forever, not that a reminder was probably needed. But on the off chance that things somehow went bad or were exposed in the weeks that followed, it would be a useful ground rule to have in place, right from day one.

I’ll give this a read Vince, keen to see what you have to say.

Browsing the Trine Day site, it looks like Whitney Webb has a new book forthcoming on the Epstein case. Good to see that Kris Milligan is hanging in there. 

Greg Poulgrain's book JFK VS ALLEN DULLES: BATTLEGROUND INDONESIA is out in the next couple of weeks (apparently), as a Kindle version. So it's interesting to see that another book, just published, looks like a complimentary volume to it. Vincent Bevin's THE JAKARTA METHOD: WASHINGTON'S ANTICOMMUNIST CRUSADE AND THE MASS MURDER PROGRAM THAT SHAPED OUR WORLD picks up the story from 1964. RFK gets a mention in this new article - apparently an excerpt from Bevin's book - as one of the few politicians concerned about what was going on down there.

HOW JAKARTA BECAME THE CODEWORD FOR US-BACKED MASS KILLING

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/05/18/how-jakarta-became-the-codeword-for-us-backed-mass-killing/?fbclid=IwAR3makWQATympqw42G0doYVx3UF0a9sqpTZnem1dTJelJM-RqHXTjZhHyr4

And this line in Bevin's piece is diverting.

Quote

Maybe RFK had a kind of conversion about the nature of black ops after his brother’s death. 

Official page for Bevin's book, with reviews and links Amazon and elsewhere.

https://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/titles/vincent-bevins/the-jakarta-method/9781541724013/?fbclid=IwAR0Js24SwGuToFofIo-EhX9M7UdCehcWU6S2pWqK4axurbueUWs0IRnV8x0

Jim's very good review has sold me on getting the book, which I will do soon.

Thanks Jim, I'll have a read. It's nice when a guy like McGovern spends time focusing on a story and getting the details right.

Still making my way through the book, good so far. Pete, you’ll enjoy both those books, and BURYING THE LEAD is a very substantial read, looks like Hyman put a lot of work into it.

The cable mentions Sindona and the Continental Illinois Bank of Chicago. This NYT story elaborates. SIndona's financial advisor was David M. Kennedy, a Nixon administration member, and previously the chairman of the bank. 

Quote

 

Michele Sindona, the Outsider as Insider in Worldwide Finance

By Clyde H. Farnsworth Special to The New York Times

May 20, 1974

 

PARIS, May 17—Though still ‘'regarded as an outsider in the frenetic world of Italian finance, Michele Sindona has become one of the most powerful of Italy's multimillionaires.

Until recently little known, the 54‐year‐old son of a farm cooperative employe has quietly assembled over the last decade an empire that includes Italy's biggest private bank, shared control with the Vatican of a bank in Geneva, Italy's giant construction conglomerate the Societa Generale Immobiliare —which owns the Watergate real‐estate development in Washington—a chain of European luxury hotels including the Meurice in Paris, a string of medium‐sized American companies—Argus, Inc., the Interphoto Corporation and the Oxford Electric Corporation—and 21.6 per cent of the Franklin National Bank, which has just disclosed losses in foreign‐currency trading that may run as high as $39‐million.

Mr. Sindona also owns 53 per cent of, the stock of the Talcott Financial Gorporation, a factoring company, which he acquired in.the open market for $27‐million.

His success has been at tributed to sharp trading instincts, an intimate knowledge of Italian tax laws and a close relationship with the men who manage the investment funds of the Vatican.

As his investment adviser and “ambassador,” Mr. Sindona has the services of President Nixon's first Secretary of the Treasury, David M. Kennedy, former chairman of the Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company.

Mr, Sindona came into the limelight when he acquired the Franklin stock two years ago, paying $40 a share to the Loews Corporation and its chairman, Laurence A. Tisch.

 

As the bank's largest stockholder, Mr. Sindona has proposed a plan to inject new capital, which could involve a further $50‐million infusion by him on top of the $40‐million check he handed over two years ago. He has been discussing the plan with the Controller of the Currency, James E. Smith.

Franklin's troubles and the losses of more than $30 million that Mr. Sindona has taken on his Franklin investment so far have raised ques,tions in the United States about the extent of his wealth, his general Operations and the impact of the Franklin situation on his empire.

. How much is Mr. Sindona worth? Fortune magazine placed the value of his fortune last August at $450Anillion. That was before his heavy losses in Franklin‐ and tight money could be squeezing his empire.

Bankers in Milan seemed ‘.:fairly certain he could raise the $50‐million for Franklin. "At this stage, there is no particular worry about his :assets,” said one. A Geneva banker added that “if he offered to put up $50‐million, he will.”

Interest in the lean, ascetic looking Sicilian was further aroused in the United States by the disclosure last month at the Mitchell‐Stans trial that Mr. Sindona had offered a secret $1‐million contribution to the 1972 Nixon reelection campaign.

Mr. Stans and former Attorney General John N. Mitchell were acquitted last month of all nine counts of criminal conspiracy, perjury and obstruction of justice in connection with a secret $200,000 cash contribution to the re‐election campaign made by another international financier, Robert L. Vesco.

Mr. Sindona runs his empire through two holding companies, Fasco International Holding, which owns his Franklin shares, and Fasco, A.G., of Liechtenstein, which owns Fasco International. Mr. Kennedy has been on the board of Fasco, A.G., and there is speculation that he may be named to head the Franklin bank temporarily.

Mr. Sindona's most important holding is probably Generale Immobiliare, an international construction company, which tumbled on the Milan Stock Exchange from 650 lire to 575 this week. (There are about 630 lire to the dollar.) Brokers in Milan said the fall reflected both the Franklin news and the general weakness of the market.

Vatican Sold Shares

In 1969 Mr. Sindona acquired one‐third of the shares of Generale Immoblliare from the Vatican's Institute for Religious Works, the body that manages the Roman Catholic Church's big investment portfolio. There were rumors in Italy at the time that Mr. Sindona had signed the final agreement with Pope Paul VI.

Mr. Sindona is also in partnership with the Vatican in the Finabank of Geneva. Classified as a foreign‐owned bank in Switzerland, Finabank does a general banking business, including portfolio management.

He also acquired another property from the Vatican, a company known as Condotte Dacqua., which supplies Rome with water. Subsequently he sold it.

Mr. Sindona was a friend of Jocelyn Hambro, managing partner of Hambros Bank until his retirement two years ago. This London merchant bank has had close ties with the Vatican for generations.

Through Banca Privata Finanzieria, a small Milan bank that Mr. Sindona acquired in 1959, he is putting together Italy's biggest bank in the private sector.

Owns Newspaper

He also owns The Rome Daily American, an English language daily in Rome.

Michele Sindona—the name is pronounced MiKAYIay SinDONa — began his rise from modest circumstances. He worked his way through law school at the University of Messina in Sicily, specializing in tax matters in country with anachronistic, highly flexible, even subjective tax policies.

He was exempted from military service during World War II and set up a law practice after the war in Milan, branching out into account ing and what later became highly profitable business of providing advice to corporations on acquisitions and mergers. Often he was paid in shares of the companies he helped merge, and as economic activity intensified in the postwar period, this process carried him into the big time.

‘Always In Motion’

He is described by one European banker who knows him as “always in motion, sharp‐eyed and hill of nervous energy.” He doesn't drink or smoke. At meetings, which he likes to keep short and sweet, he does not doodle and puts his energy into folding numerous tiny paper hats and stacking them in neat piles.

He has met rebuffs along with his successes.

His most bitter blow was a defeat three years ago at the hands of the Italian financial establishment when he fought for control of the Bastogi Company, a giant holding company.

With Hambros Bank helping him, and not at all liking the publicity, he was challenged by perhaps the most powerful man in Italy, Guido Carli, chairman of the Bank of Italy. Mr. Carli let it be known that, he didn't want Mr. Sindona, who is an im

Banca Privata, which owns small banks in Messina Milan, is shortly to merge with Banca Unione, creating an institution with deposits approaching $1‐billion., Sindona well own 51 per cent of the new bank. Italy's three biggest banks, which control 80 per cent of deposits in the country, nationalized. Mr. Sindona and Mr. Kennedy met when Continental took a small terest in Banca Privata the mid‐nineteen‐sixties along with Hambros Bank.

Mr. Sindona's other main holding in Italy is a financial company known as Edilcentro ‐ Sviluppo, which among other things owns a chain of European luxury hotels. Shortly after acquiring Edilcentro in a financial market coup last June, Mr. Sindona arranged a merger., so that it now functions under the Generale Immobiliare umbrella. placable opponent of state ownership of enterprise, at the head of Bastogi. And that turned the tide against the Sicilian financier, Who later complained that he had been rebuffed because of his humble origins.

As a Sicilian he had to face the inevitable rumors, which have never been substantiated, that he was linked with the Mafia.

Invested in U.S.

After the Bastogi affair, Mr., Sindona, already involved in investments in the United States, became interested in making a major American investment.

He had been buying and selling interests in. American companies for some years before acquiring the Franklin holdings. Some of these trades involved 10 per cent of Libby McNeill & Libby; 23 per cent of the Brown Company, a New Hampshire paper company and a block of Gulf and Western.

He acquired a controlling interest in three other companies as longer term investments and hired Daniel A. Porco, a steel company executive from Pittsburgh to be his American representative.

Known on the continent as an American ophile, he and his wife like to visit New York, where they stay at the St. Regis Hotel. Their three children are grown.

In 1972 he tried to persuade stockholders of the three companies — Argus, Inc., and the Interphoto Corporation, two photo companies, and the Oxford Electric Company—to approve a complex series of transactions under which $3‐million that Oxford was to get for divisions sold to Interphoto would be invested in the Uranya Company of Italy, a manufacturer of television and high‐fidelity equipment also controlled by Mr. Sindona.

According to material filed by Oxford with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Uranya's losses made the $3million investment essential if Uranya's “liquidation is to be averted.” And Uranya owed money to Mr. Sindona's Banca Privata.

Documents from Oxford and Interphoto said the transactions involved a “conflict of interest” and were not negotiated “at arms length.”

Eventually the issues were resolved to the satisfaction of both the S.E.C. and the American Stock Exchange, which also was involved in the affair.

Why did he buy into the Franklin National Bank?

Harold V. Gleason, the bank's chairman, told an interviewer recently that he had asked Mr. Sindona this question and got the following reply:

“I have great confidence in the United States. I feel that the United States is the home of world monetary stability. I want to plant my roots in the United States.”

Kennedy Declines Comment

TAIPEI, Taiwan, May 18 —Mr. Kennedy, interviewed here where he and his wife are tending to personal business interests, declined to discuss speculation that he would take a leading position at the Franklin National Bank.

 

Jim, I'd say the new book is about a different subject.

Those earlier books, whatever their respective merits, are largely about Oswald's doppelgänger, twin, or double. 

This new book is about a totally different guy who had a career path that oddly matched things that Oswald got up to, possibly because they shared handlers or both took part in the same program. So it's a slightly different kettle of fish.

Posting this again if others have new thoughts on the topic.

https://www.wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1973ROME03261_b.html

Quote

APRIL 26 ISSUE OF SENSATIONAL WEEKLY NEWS JOURNAL QUOTE PANORAMA UNQUOTE CARRIED SCURRILOUS COVER STORY ENTITLED QUOTE THE FASCIST POISON UNQUOTE LINKING THE RIGHT-WING MSI, THE CIA, AND FSO PETER BRIDGES ( ASSIGNED ROME 1966 TO 1971) IN PLOT ALLEGED TO INCLUDE 1969 PIAZZA FONTANA ( MILAN) BANK BOMBING WHICH TOOK 16 LIVES AND INJURED 88 OTHERS. STORY ALLEGES PLOT AND BOMBING INTENDED TO SPARK SWING TO RIGHT IN PUBLIC OPINION TO PERMIT RIGHT-WING " CHANGE OF COURSE." CHANNELS OF FUNDS TO SUPPORT MSI IN GENERAL, AND THEREFORE CONSPIRACY ALSO, WERE NAMED AS ROME OFFICES OF FEED GRAINS COUNCIL, MERRILL LYNCH, AND CONTINENTAL ILLINOIS BANK OF CHICAGO ( LINKED IN STORY TO MICHELE SINDONA). ARTICLE IS BEING TRANSLATED AND WILL BE POUCHED TO ADDEES ASAP.

According to the interview below, Bridges started his diplomatic career with the aid of Dimitri Von Mohrenschildt, older brother of George de Mohrenschildt.

http://www.adst.org/OH TOCs/Bridges, Peter S.toc.pdf

I know little about the topic but the book looks good so far. Lots of files referenced and seems to have a clear headed approach to the subject matter. The Kindle version on Amazon is around $10 or so.

Gary Hill’s new book on Robert E. Webster, THE OTHER OSWALD: A WILDERNESS OF MIRRORS, is now out on Amazon Kindle. It has introductions from Bill Simpich and Walt Brown. I bought it last night but haven’t read enough to comment yet.

Rob is correct that I placed Leslie in touch with him - at her request, as she saw I was a member, and we’d chatted about other stuff. Beyond that, I’m just an observer.

I’ll need to check those Godson scans. Godson ran a series of conferences - again full of CSIS spook types - at the end of the 70’s and beginning of the 80’s - coveting the theme of reforming the intelligence community, though the reforms he had in mind appear to be away from openness.

Likewise, if anyone’s interested, check the CIA Crest site, and search through the first two pages of hits for the Aspen Institute. During the final few months of the HSCA, the Institute held an odd conference on government secrecy, and some interesting names attended.