David Andrews

We arrived here because members were discussing the covert relations between Shaw-Ferrie-Oswald. I questioned whether Shaw relied on Ferrie to handle Oswald not because they moved in two of the same circles, but because Banister supplied Ferrie as handler. This would have been a mistake for Shaw, because Ferrie's visibility as a homosexual increased Shaw's visibility, adding one more point of identification to "Clay Bertrand." My point in defending you and Oliver Stone throughout was that Garrison was not witch hunting homosexuals, but that the homosexual associations of Shaw and Ferrie made them visible and memorable. One could also blame Dean Andrews, who did the worst job of shutting up, and connected Bertrand to homosexuals.

Where did the theory that Oswald would have his mental hospital employment file switched for a patient file originate, anyway?

That was back in the day when, thanks to Eisenhower's defense-aiding highway system upgrades, Des Moines had a shot at being a national-level city. Now no country would ever nuke an Iowa city, and Des Moines has settled into obscurity in an old folks home, feebly playing shuffleboard with Grand Rapids, Michigan. Why don't our Forever Wars keep us uniformly prosperous, as the Cold War did? Did Mollenhoff suss out Rometsch's White house connections within the Baker scandal on his own, and did the Register have the juice to publish and be damned? Or was the story dropped in their laps by the Baker-Johnson crowd, as a shot across Kennedy's bow? I'm reminded of how, in 1995, a scoop on how the FBI and US Marshals were expecting a terror incident during the trial of the 1993 WTC bombers was obviously leaked to The Newark Star-Ledger and not to a major New York Metro paper. Somebody in law enforcement wanted that out there, and they dropped it on a thirsty paper no one takes seriously (it was even made fun of on The Sopranos). Some leaks apparently get a strategic out-of-town tryout before they reach the Great White Way. Once the leak runs off-Broadway, as it were, the major papers have no kibosh option and are forced to address the issue.

How important was Clark Mollenhoff, and his Des Moines, IA, newspaper? Who leaked the story there in October, and why him? Rometsch had been secretly deported in August. From wiki: The allegations involving Rometsch and her subsequent removal from the U.S., were brought to the public's attention through a front page article written by Clark R. Mollenhoff in the October 26, 1963, issue of the Des Moines Register.[12] Mollenhoff said her circle included "several congressional figures" and "several high executive branch officials" and "moved in a crowd that included some well-known New Frontier figures",[12] and that she led a life that "could not be financed on the pay of a non commissioned West German soldier."[13] A few days later Clark Mollenhoff asked President Kennedy at a live televised press conference if he is fulfilling the requirements of his Code of Ethics. In his response Kennedy seemed to make a veiled reference to the Rometsch story Mollenhoff had just written by saying, "I have always believed that innuendoes should be justified before they are made, either by me and the Congress, or even in the press." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Rometsch She may be still alive. Get that woman a membership! https://www.imdb.com/name/nm8503476/?ref_=nmbio_bio_nm

I suspect that by the time the Rometsch affair was known in government circles, and certainly by the time Rometsch was outed in the press, the JFKA plans were long in development, and the assassination was not greenlighted because of the Rometsch dalliance. Still, good to see this memo as part of the pre-JFKA paper trail.

Double-posted, sorry, please delete.

Right, I remember the order of things, now, thanks. I understand the theory that the whole point was to get LHO a job at the East Louisiana Hospital, so his employment file could be converted to a patient file. But this was the same Oswald (or not?) who was put to work by Banister passing out leaflets that summer on Canal Street (August 9) and in front of Shaw's Trade Mart (August 16). What would be the point of stashing him many, many miles away in Clinton in either late August or early September 1963, as Morgan remembered it? Especially since an early September residency in Clinton might conflict Oswald's work attendance, or fabricated inpatient status, with his late September "Mexico trip." And where would psychiatric detention have fit in with his early-mid August street activities? Was Clinton organized to hide Oswald far from NOLA while he was impersonated in Mexico, and not to paint him as a mental patient? After all, he would need a new job in Dallas soon...

Shaw was probably trying to convince Oswald that the voter registration thing was legit, not some kind of trap. On the other hand...if Shaw and Ferrie didn't expect a CORE registration drive in Clinton that day, what could be the reason they gave Oswald for shipping him out to a remote town to register, except that he'd be doing it alongside African-Americans, and thus increasing his sheep-dip as a left-winger? And could they really rely on Oswald using a doctor's name to get and keep a job in a mental hospital? How could he play the NOLA street provocateur from out in the boonies, several parishes away?

I dunno...I think Shaw was tight enough with CIA and Gladio, internationally, to be wired pretty high. This is what makes it surprising that he'd put himself just one remove from Oswald, with only Ferrie between them - just damn bad tradecraft if you're already high-visibility as a homosexual in those days. If, as Jim says, Shaw-Banister-Guy Johnson were the IC in NOLA, maybe (old party photography to the contrary) Ferrie stood between Shaw and Oswald not because Shaw relied on Ferrie, but because he was the best handler Banister could provide. Bad news, if you can be linked to your cut-out, and make a public appearance with him and the patsy in a little town with too much unexpected excitement (Clinton). Again - Shaw wasn't dragged in because he was a homosexual with questionable associations; he was implicated because homosexual life provided an extra point of identification for a man who got too close to the patsy and the cut-out.

I think you've got a useful note here, but the scenario depends on Shaw being judged a sacrifice if the USG investigated for conspiracy, yet preservable when it was only "that kook/glory seeker" Garrison. When Garrison went public, the whole thing could have been shut down if Shaw were suicided. Even Ferrie would have fallen into quietude, maybe left the country. But there was apparently some loyalty to Shaw for past service, as Helms ended up on the record as helping him. So if there were a motion to use Shaw-Ferrie-Banister as patsies, it probably originated at a level below Helms and Angleton, and perhaps even below Philips. In other words, nothing CIA was bound to honor to the letter. Still, you have a point worth investigating. And institutional objectives do change with time and circumstance.

The Shaw associates were only a corner of an assassination conspiracy that operated in Garrison's legal bailiwick, not a mainstay of the assassination plot realized in Dallas, except in the sense that Shaw, in his international connections (Italy to NOLA to Canada) served as a facilitator of the consensual logistics that got Kennedy killed. Shaw's error was to be the corner that turned up from flush and became obvious to the eye, through the potential for exposure among his associates, who were of the local homosexual milieu - including the attorney Andrews, by his clients. Shaw was not made a vulnerable homosexual, but became vulnerable to investigation and discovery because he was homosexual - as was, at the time, a liability in clandestine work. Nobody refuting the homophobia charge is seizing on this obvious, historically familiar point. I'm sure it became obvious to Shaw, in retrospect. It's difficult to conceal a truly fatal covert life when a second, innocuous covert life provides an entree to one's secrets, and one's associates overlap the borders. And it's plain bad tradecraft to go slumming among the low-level operatives. Whoever permitted Shaw to do so should have known better Now I really must get back to tonight's recipe: stir-fry angel hair pasta. Liquify thin-sliced garlic in enough olive oil to minimally coat the pasta when added. Add minced fried ground beef, or one can of crabmeat. Stir in spices. Add two servings of cooked angel hair pasta, stirring in one diced green onion, one-half can petite diced tomatoes, and chili pepper flakes to taste (some like it hot!) Add one-half cup of mushroom-garlic flavored pasta sauce, and one cup or less vodka sauce. Stir-fry until sauce thoroughly coats pasta. Turn off heat and let bake on the burner under a pan lid for 10-15 minutes.

I doubt you'll see it off-the-cob in Indian or Thai restaurant cookery, Besides, I'm going for this restaurant ethos of "unexpected western ingredients" - though I draw the line at the canned diced carrots I've seen in some Indian restaurant dishes. This homophobia thing? Patently cooked up between Parnell and DiEugenio to boost JFK Revisited repeat rentals ahead of the four-hour version premiere.

I'm using frozen green peas, canned black eye peas, some canned corn (not as much as last time) and Thai red curry base over brown rice. Last time I bought frozen peas, they were too hard in another recipe, but I'll take a chance with another brand. A lot of times in restaurant curry (Indian), the peas look canned in color, but that may be a cold storage thing. I worry that canned peas will turn to mush in this recipe. Oh, yes - homophobia?

I'm disappointed that no one cares about my curry recipe, especially since I have to go to the store now.

In Dallas, the concept may have been similar to the FBI's 302 forms, which are written by agents from their notes when a witness is interviewed, with no recording made. The agents are free to dictate events and quotations as they see fit, or omit them. Worked wonders with the troublesome TWA 800 crash witnesses who saw a missile or missiles strike the plane, and is still in use today.

"Of uncertain origin."

Kirchick's CV has certain resonances with Anthony Thorne's essay on think-tank connections, written for Coup in Dallas. Tonight I'm making chicken in red curry, and I'm fretting over using canned peas rather than frozen. What do you think?

James Kirchick is a columnist for Tablet magazine, a Nonresident Senior Fellow for the Europe Center at the Atlantic Council, and the author of Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington. A widely published journalist, he has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the Spectator, the Atlantic, Commentary, the New York Review of Books, and the Times Literary Supplement, among many other publications. His first book, “The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues and the Coming Dark Age,” was published by Yale University Press in 2017. From 2017 to 2021, Kirchick was a visiting fellow at the Center on the United States and Europe and Project on International Order and Strategy at the Brookings Institution. Prior to Brookings, he was a fellow at the Foreign Policy Initiative in Washington, DC, and a Robert Bosch Foundation fellow in Berlin. In 2010, he became writer-at-large for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Prague, where he covered the politics and cultures of the twenty-one countries in the news company’s broadcast region. He covered major events including the First Libyan Civil War, a fraudulent presidential election in Belarus, and revolution and ethnic clashes in Kyrgyzstan. Kirchick began his professional journalism career at The New Republic, where he covered domestic politics, lobbying, intelligence, and American foreign policy. Recognized for his voice on American gay politics and international gay rights, he is a recipient of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association’s Journalist of the Year Award. He is a professional member of the PEN American Center. Kirchick has spoken at venues across the United States and around the world including the Oslo Freedom Forum, the Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy, the Stockholm Free World Forum, the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, and Yale, Columbia and Princeton Universities. He is a frequent commentator on television and radio. Born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts, he is a graduate of the Roxbury Latin School and Yale College. https://jameskirchick.com/about/

What if he's just a Mockingbird variant?

My impulse with Nagell (and Dick Russell's book) has been to proceed like a screenwriter and try find the through line of the story, the line that leads from A to B and onward. However, Larry's interview with Wilson makes the important point that researchers often proceed backward from a significant event and try to reverse-engineer the circumstances that "created" it, as if they were stone-set principals. When, really, chance, change of plans, improvised methods and human perversity have to accounted for - "perverse engineering," if you will.

It's true, and what David Boylan says is true. I really need to review the "Bob" saga as presented to Dick Russell., and compare it ti the latest estimates. Still, somebody gave Nagell funding and put him in play, as you point out in the Wilson interview. Somebody he could jerk around a bit by ducking into VA hospitals, visiting relatives, etc. Among similarities between Oswald and Nagell, as discussed with Wilson, Nagell is also in a position to be subverted by persons whose affiliations are unclear to him, and to be moved around geographically like a pawn. (Which is why I wondered above if any chicanery making him think he'd been doubled by the Russians might have been manufactured by CIA to give him an imperative.) So, when Nagell told Oswald he was being played, I feel it was from a very real sense that he himself was in the same fix and recognized the signs. Benjamin Cole, if nothing else, Nagell is an important monitor of the way Agency and KGB methods played out in the Kennedy period. One just has to decide, after ongoing serious consideration, how important his knowledge and experience were to JFKA research.

One of the reasons I asked: If Hecksher was double agent "Bob," and "Bob" threatened to expose Nagell to US authorities...where would that have left Hecksher's career?

OK, Larry - Thanks very much. My recollection is that Dick Russell wrote that Nagell said that"Bob" revealed himself as a double and hooked Nagell into a situation where non-cooperation would get Nagell exposed for an unwitting offense. I'll have to reread Russell for accuracy, and factor in your findings.

They are. Check the link to Swike's book on Google Books, page 180.

No. Swike says Nagell "somehow got a copy of [the] letter" and that "these are his comments." And that "tee hee" is typical RCN. The letter is attachment 13-10 in Swike's book The Missing Chapter: Lee Harvey Oswald in the Far East https://books.google.com/books?id=64ji-mF2oaAC&pg=PA174&lpg=PA174&dq=richard+case+nagell+albany&source=bl&ots=0z950w9aYy&sig=ACfU3U3GG13OzipgTT-enRYNCHcgbo73mw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjL85aD19_1AhWkY98KHWMaD5YQ6AF6BAgVEAM#v=onepage&q=richard case nagell albany&f=false