John Simkin

"... After the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, Ward told Keeler that he believed John F. Kennedy would be assassinated. He told her and Eugene Ivanov: "A man like John Kennedy will not be allowed to stay in such an important position of power in the world, I assure you of that." I will return to this issue later because evidence would emerge in 1963 that Ward was working for MI6 during this political crisis."

John, do you believe MI6 was aware of an assassination plot as early as October of 1962, or that this was more of a "hunch" of Ward's?

There was a lot of contact between the two intelligence agencies. For example, in 1962, James Angleton had a meeting with Peter Wright about the British supplying men to kill Castro. I am sure things would have said about the possible threats to JFK. It is alsao possible it got this from Ivanov who was a KGB agent.

The MI5 officer who told Anthony Summers the story about Stephen Ward's murder has been named today as Lee Tracey.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/10488686/The-Profumo-Affair-It-was-decided-that-Stephen-Ward-had-to-die.html

I would say the following is required reading....Even though it isn't going to blow any doors off.

Still, I'm sure the fact that Lady Jean Campbell is featured in Warren Commission documents and her

marriage to the author of Oswald's Ghost "I did it for the money," Mailer, might be a jolt to some.

Lady Jeanne Campbell — obituary

The Telegraph 09/23/2007

In one of her early reports Jeanne wrote a critical review of the CIA, causing Beaverbrook to warn her to be careful what she said about the secret service of the country in which she was living. He further advised her: “Emphasise human interest. Put the best strawberry on top of the basket. Write short sentences. Cut, cut, cut. Always interview people face to face. Never rewrite from another newspaper. Keep widening your circle of acquaintances — even if it means accepting the invitations of bores. Use your feet.”

.... Following the assassination of Kennedy in 1963 Jeanne was one of a group that included Jones Harris and Tom Bethell that investigated various conspiracy theories.

Tom Bethell was of course involved in the Jim Garrison investigation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Bethell

I first became interested in the case of Stephen Ward while investigating the assassination of John F. Kennedy. I cam across a declassified FBI file that suggested they were investigating the visit of Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies in July, 1962. The date intrigued me as the story about Keeler and Rice-Davies being involved with the Minister of War John Profumo only became news in March, 1963. Further research showed that it was not only J. Edgar Hoover who was interested in the the Profumo Scandal. In 1963 President Kennedy was paying more than ordinary attention to the case. According to his friend, Ben Bradlee: "He had devoured every word written about the Profumo case. He ordered all further cables on that subject sent to him immediately." The reason Kennedy was concerned so much with the case was that he had been told there was a connection between the women being employed by the sex-parties run by Bobby Baker in Washington and those being organized by Stephen Ward in London. Much to his regret, Kennedy had become involved with some of the women supplied by Baker. This included Suzy Chang and Maria Novotny. By 1963 Kennedy realised that Lyndon B. Johnson was behind Baker's operation and it had been used to gather information to be used to blackmail politicians in Washington. This information was also being shared with Hoover and the FBI. It seemed that Ward was running a similar operation in London. Was it being done for the benefit of MI5? If so, why had MI5 not warned Profumo of this? Or were the intelligence services using this information in the same way as they were in Washington?

I decided to produce some material on the Profumo case. This took the form of biographies on the key figures. During my research I discovered that Keeler and Rice-Davies met Earl Felton at a 1963 New Year party. According to Rice-Davies, Fenton was a screen-writer who introduced her to Robert Mitchum. The following month Felton contacted Keeler. According to her account: "Stephen had been telling him lies, feeding him false information and indicating that I was spying for the Russians because of my love for Eugene. The message was to leave the country, say nothing about anything I might have seen or heard." I know from other sources that Fenton was a CIA agent.

A FBI document dated on 29th January, 1963, reveals that Thomas Corbally, an American businessman who was a close friend of Stephen Ward, told Alfred Wells, the secretary to David Bruce, the ambassador, that Christine Keeler was having a sexual relationship with John Profumo and Eugene Ivanov. The document also stated that Harold Macmillan had been informed about this scandal.

In March, 2009, I was contacted by Mandy Rice-Davies, who was upset by my biography of her. She was particularly angry about a quote I had used by Christine Keeler, that she considered libelous. I was invited to telephone her, which I did, and she was very generous with the amount of information she gave me on the case. The problem was that she was just a pawn in these events and was unable to see the larger picture. For example, she refused to accept that Earl Fenton was a CIA agent and that he genuinely wanted to make her a Hollywood star.

Rice-Davies did give me some really interesting information about the court-case. It was her intention to provide evidence to the court that Stephen Ward was not living on her immoral earnings. However, when she was cross-examined by Ward's defence counsel, James Burge, he never gave her the opportunity to explain this. Whereas when she was cross-examined by the prosecuting council, Mervyn Griffith-Jones, he was allowed by the judge to give the false impression that Lord Astor paid her £200 to have sex with her. Rice-Davies speculated that someone was so determined to get Ward they were even controlling his defence team. I am convinced she is right but it was not the government but the intelligence agencies who had decided on who were going to be the victims of the cover-up.

The story begins in 1952 when Stephen Ward, who worked for the Osteopathic Association Clinic in Dorset Square, became friendly with model, Joy Lewis. She was the wife of the successful businessman and former Labour Party MP, John Lewis. Ward introduced Joy to Frederic Mullally. It was claimed that Mullally had once said that his greatest ambition was to sleep with all the beautiful women in London. Mullally began an affair with Joy Lewis. Mullally later commented: "She (Joy) and Lewis had lots of fights, rows and walkouts. And on one occasion she went out in great distress, and didn't know what to do, and called Stephen Ward. And he put her up for the night at his place. It was a totally friendly gesture on his part." However, when Lewis heard about what happened, he became convinced that Ward was also having an affair with his wife.

Lewis also became angry with Ward over another relationship his wife had. Ward's friend, Warwick Charlton, has argued: "He (Lewis) went potty when he found Stephen had fixed her up with a Swedish beauty queen, a lesbian, with whom she had an affair. This he thought, was an assault on his manhood... He had a heart attack over it." Charlton was with Lewis when he heard the news of the affair. Lewis told Charlton "I will get Ward whatever happens". Lewis took out a revolver and said "I'll shoot myself, but not before I get Ward." Charlton claimed that "from then on, the most important thing in John's life was his burning hatred for Ward, which went on year after year."

The journalist, Logan Gourlay, remembers that in 1953 Lewis attempted to get his newspaper, The Daily Express, to publish an article discrediting Ward. Frederic Mullally explained: "Lewis got hold of an Express reporter, a young untrained boy, and gave him what purported to be an exclusive story that Stephen Ward and I were running a call-girl business in Mayfair." The editor, Arthur Christiansen, who was friendly with both Ward and Mullally, and refused to publish the story. Lewis now began to telephone the Marylebone Police Station anonymously, saying that Dr Ward was procuring girls for his wealthy patients. The police treated the calls as coming from a crank and ignored them.

MI6, who provided prostitutes for foreign visitors, became aware of the activities of Stephan Ward. One officer admitted: "We learned that Ward wasn't that interested in participating in sex. He liked to watch girls being screwed, especially adult women dressed up as underage girls. Ward would obtain girls, and a boost for us came when he met Lord Astor - and capitalised on Astor's perversion... For us, here was a thriving little London setup with all sorts of big names and diplomats and others swimming in and out... MI6 has tentacles everywhere, and someone spotted Ward and felt the setup might become useful, that some interesting people might walk into it. We could get to know them, do little deals, so that they'd be friends of ours."

According to the authors of Honeytrap (1987), MI6 became aware of the attempts by Lewis to bring an end to Ward's activities. An MI6 officer recalled: "The problem was how do we negate Lewis, and stop him spoiling this promising setup? My case officer assigned me to get in with Lewis, and I did, by pretending I wanted an interview for the paper or something. Soon I was going nightclubbing with him - we went to a place called Eve's quite a lot. He was quite open about his hatred for Ward. And I got in with him to the extent that I was helping him to plan his anti-Ward campaign, but in such a way as to make sure it didn't come off.... Ward was never actually recruited, so far as I knew, just observed and kept on ice as an available asset."

In 1954 John Lewis decided to divorce his wife. Lewis told Warwick Charlton that he was going to use the case to ruin Stephen Ward: "He's a bastard. Not only did he introduce Joy to Freddy Mullally but to some Swedish beauty queen as well. I'm going to cite seven men and one woman in my divorce case." The judge in the case noted it had "been fought with a consistent and virulent bitterness which could rarely have been excelled". The judge also questioned some of the evidence he heard. It was later claimed that "Lewis asked several witnesses to perjure themselves, and bribed some to do so." Lewis had not obtained the revenge he required but he was unwilling to forget the damage that Ward had done him.

Ward continued to prosper as an osteopath and his patients included people such as Winston Churchill, Duncan Sandys, Feliks Topolski, Ava Gardner, Mary Martin and Mel Ferrer became his patients. This enabled him to set up his own clinic in Cavendish Square, on the fringe of Harley Street. Over patients included Lord Astor, who allowed him the use of a cottage on his Cliveden Estate. Other friends included Colin Coote, the editor of the Daily Telegraph, Roger Hollis, the head of MI5, Anthony Blunt, Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures, Geoffrey Nicholson, the Conservative MP, Peter Rachman, the famous slum landlord and the actor, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Ward was also an artist and he had a reputation for producing fine portraits of his friends. This included the Duke of Edinburgh and Madame Furtseva, the Soviet Minister of Culture.

In 1959 met Christine Keeler, when she worked as a showgirl at Murrays Cabaret Club. It was not long before she decided to go and live with him at his flat in Orme Court in Bayswater. "His flat was tiny and on the top floor but there was a lift. There was a bed-sitting room with two single beds pushed close together, and an adjoining bathroom. we would share the bed but only as brother and sister; there were never to be any sexual goings-on between us."

During this period Ward also got to know Maria Novotny, Mandy Rice-Davies and Suzy Chang. Novotny ran sex parties in London. So many senior politicians attended that she began referring to herself as the "government's Chief Whip". As well as British politicians such as John Profumo and Ernest Marples, foreign leaders such as Willy Brandt and Ayub Khan, attended these parties.

In 1960 Novotny travelled to the United States with Chang. It is believed that both girls worked at the Quorum Club in Washington, run by Bobby Baker, and became involved in relationships with leading politicians. This included both John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. Recently released FBI files claim that Stephen Ward was involved in supplying these girls. The FBI investigation also suggested that a "Hungarian madam in New York" was also involved in what was called the "Bowtie" case.

Colin Coote, the editor of the Daily Telegraph commissioned Stephen Ward to sketch pictures of participants in the trial of Adolf Eichmann. Coote " got many complimentary letters about the drawings and decided that when there was another opportunity to use Ward he would do so." Coote suggested Ward should go to the Soviet Union to sketch the leading politicians of the country. However, Ward had difficulty getting a visa from the Soviet Embassy in London. Ward told Coote about his problems and on 21st January 1961, Coote invited Ward to have lunch at the Garrick Club with Eugene Ivanov, an naval attaché at the embassy. Coote later recalled: "I remembered Stephen Ward's difficulty about a visa and thought that this link might be useful." David Floyd, the Daily Telegraph's correspondent on Soviet affairs, also attended the lunch. Ward was impressed with Ivanov's ability to discuss foreign affairs: "I listened with fascination as they argued backward and forward on issues which I had never heard discussed before in an intelligent and informal manner."

Ward and Ivanov became close friends. As Philip Knightley pointed out: "As Ward's friendship with Ivanov blossomed, the original purpose for meeting him - to get a visa to go and sketch Soviet leaders - appears to have been forgotten. The two men met often and went everywhere together. Ivanov would call at Ward's flat unannounced and the two of them would go out - either to visit a club, to play bridge, or to dine with one of Ward's friends." Anthony Summers argues that: "MI5's D branch, responsible for counter-espionage, quickly identified Ivanov as a Soviet Intelligence officer using diplomatic cover, a common practice worldwide. According to one source, part of Ivanov's mission may have been to supervise Soviet penetration of the Portland naval base in Dorset."

In February, 1961, Ward and Christine Keeler moved to 17 Wimpole Mews in Marylebone. According to Keeler's autobiography, The Truth at Last (2001), Roger Hollis and Anthony Blunt were regular visitors to the flat. "He (Lord Denning) knew that Stephen was a spy and that I knew too much. During my two sessions with him I told him all about Hollis and Blunt: how Stephen had politely introduced me and how I had said 'hello' and nodded when they visited. I told him all about Sir Godfrey's visit and how I had seen Sir Godfrey with Eugene. He asked me very precisely who had met Eugene and about the visitors to Wimpole Mews. He showed me a photograph of Hollis - it wasn't a sharp shot of him - and asked me to identify him. I told Denning this was the man who had visited Stephen. He showed me a photograph of Sir Godfrey and I also identified him. He did not show me a picture of Blunt for, I suspect, they already knew more than they wanted to know about Blunt. Denning was very gentle about it and I told him everything. This was the nice gentleman who was going to look after me. But I was ignored, side-lined - disparaged as a xxxx so that he could claim that there had been no security risk. It was the ultimate whitewash."

Ward also got to know Keith Wagstaffe of MI5. On 8th June 1961, the two men went out to dinner before going back to the Wimpole Mews flat. Christine Keeler made the two men coffee: "Stephen was on the couch and Wagstaffe sat on the sofa chair. He wanted to know about Stephen's friendship with Eugene. We knew that MI5 were monitoring embassy personnel so this was quite a normal interview in the circumstances." Wagstaffe asked Ward: "He's never asked you to put him in touch with anyone you know? Or for information of any kind." Ward replied: "No, he hasn't. But if he did, naturally I would get in touch with you straight away. If there's anything I can do I'd be only too pleased to."

Keith Wagstaffe reported back to MI5: "Ward asked me if it was all right for him to continue to see Ivanov. I replied that there was no reason why he should not. He then said if there was any way in which he could help he would be very ready to do so. I thanked him for his offer and asked him to get in touch with me should Ivanov at any time in the future make any propositions to him... Ward was completely open about his association with Ivanov... I do not think that he (Ward) is of security interest."

On 8th July 1961 Christine Keeler met John Profumo, the Minister of War, at a party at Cliveden. Profumo kept in contact with Keeler and they eventually began an affair. According to Keeler: "Their (Ward and Hollis) plan was simple. I was to find out, through pillow talk, from Jack Profumo when nuclear warheads were being moved to Germany." Profumo and other cabinet ministers were also attending sex parties being held by Mariella Novotny. In December 1961 Novotny held a party that became known as the "Feast of Peacocks". According to Keeler, there was "a lavish dinner in which this man wearing only... a black mask with slits for eyes and laces up the back... and a tiny apron - one like the waitresses wore in 1950s tearooms - asked to be whipped if people were not happy with his services." Although MI5 and MI6 were aware of these sex parties taking place, there is no evidence that these politicians were warned about the danger they were in.

After the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, Ward told Keeler that he believed John F. Kennedy would be assassinated. He told her and Eugene Ivanov: "A man like John Kennedy will not be allowed to stay in such an important position of power in the world, I assure you of that." I will return to this issue later because evidence would emerge in 1963 that Ward was working for MI6 during this political crisis.

On 28th October, 1962, Ward introduced Christine Keeler to Michael Eddowes, a lawyer who had become a rich businessman. This included owning Bistro Vino, a chain of restaurants. (Later this lawyer was to become very involved in the cover-up of the assassination of John F. Kennedy). As Keeler later revealed: "I kept my date with Michael Eddowes but he was far too old for me. He was nearly sixty but her certainly was interested and wanted to set me up in a flat in Regent's Park."

During this period Keeler became involved with two black men, Lucky Gordon and John Edgecombe. The two men became jealous of each other and this resulted in Edgecombe slashing Gordon's face with a knife. On 14th December 1962, Edgecombe, fired a gun at Stephen Ward's Wimpole Mews flat, where Keeler had been visiting with Mandy Rice-Davies.

Two days after the shooting Keeler contacted Michael Eddowes for legal advice about the Edgecombe case. During this meeting she told Eddowes: "Stephen (Ward) asked me to ask Jack Profumo what date the Germans were to get the bomb." However, she later claimed that she knew Ward was joking when he said this. Eddowes then asked Ward about this matter. Keeler later recalled: "Stephen fed him the line he had prepared with Roger Hollis for such an eventuality: it was Eugene (Ivanov) who had asked me to find out about the bomb."

On 24th December 1962, Ward's old enemy, John Lewis, met Christine Keeler at a Christmas Party. She told him about the problems she was having with two of her former lovers, Lucky Gordon and John Edgecombe. "On the surface, the man I met at Jenny's party on Christmas Eve 1962, could not have been more helpful. I didn't know he was using me as a conduit to get to Stephen Ward. He bragged about getting hundreds of thousands of pounds in legal actions against newspapers. My legal troubles involving Johnnie and Lucky were nothing. I was so grateful when he said he would get his lawyers to help and even more pleased that he actually rang, as promised, the next day." Keeler later admitted that he was "one of the most evil men of the whole affair, the vindictive John Lewis... Stephen had played a part in his bitter divorce from his wife, Joy, and Lewis was, even years later, after him."

Lewis decided he would pass this information to George Wigg, the MP for Dudley. The first meeting took place on 2nd January 1963. Wigg was interested in the story but asked Lewis to provide him with more information. Lewis now told Keeler he was willing to pay her £30,000 if her information brought the government down. Keeler responded by telling him that "Stephen (Ward) asked me to ask Jack Profumo what date the Germans were to get the bomb." Wigg's secretary remembers, "Mr Lewis constantly rang up during the day when Mr Wigg was about his parliamentary business. I frequently got the impression he wasn't completely sober. But he was insistent." On 7th January, Lewis told Wigg the story about Ward asking her to discover classified information from Profumo.

Wigg pointed out in his autobiography: "Lewis had attended a pre-Christmas party where a Miss Christine Keeler talked excitedly about a recent shooting incident, the first of several events destined to endow her with what she appeared to crave the reputation of being the most notorious woman in London. Miss Keeler, who said she had heard a Mr Stephen Ward refer to Lewis, asked if she could telephone him and, a few days later, sought his help. She then spoke about her friendship with John Profumo, Secretary of State for War, and with the Russian Naval Attaché, Captain Eugene Ivanov. Miss Keeler alleged that Ward had asked her to obtain from Profumo information about the supply of atomic weapons to the Germans... I rejected at once the idea that Profumo personally was a security risk. I had found him politically untrustworthy but I never regarded him as a fool, and I could not be persuaded that an obviously ignorant girl would be used as a go-between. It seemed to me the man to keep an eye on was Ivanov. Lewis agreed that the matter must be handled exclusively on the issue of security. I urged him to talk to the police and, at a later stage, advised him to talk to Commander Townsend at Scotland Yard. Lewis did talk to the police but, being dissatisfied with the results, returned to me again and again."

Warwick Charlton later explained. "John Lewis was an able politician. He had held pretty high office, but because of the way he was living he had lost his seat. He was desperate to get back in. He had two motives delivered to him by Christine: one, the Russian security thing, and, two, evidence that Stephen was a ponce. He'd have his revenge, and he had little presents to give Wigg to beat the Tory Party with, and he might get back and re-establish his reputation with Labour."

On 10th March, 1963, Wigg attended a party with Harold Wilson, the leader of the Labour Party, Richard Crossman and Barbara Castle. Crossman later recalled: "When we arrived at the party George outlined the story to us and we emphatically and unanimously repudiated it. We all felt that even if it was true and Profumo was having an affair with a call girl and that some Russian diplomat had been mixed up in it, the Labour Party simply should not touch it. I remember that we all advised Harold very strongly against it and in a way rather squashed George."

George Wigg got up in the House of Commons on 21st March and asked Home Secretary Henry Brooke, during a debate on the John Vassall affair: "I rightly use the Privilege of the House of Commons - that is what it is given me for - to ask the Home Secretary who is the senior member of the Government on the Treasury Bench now, to go to the Dispatch Box - he knows that the rumour to which I refer relates to Miss Christine Keeler and Miss Davies and a shooting by a West Indian - and, on behalf of the Government, categorically deny the truth of these rumours.... It is not good for a democratic State that rumours of this kind should spread and be inflated, and go on. Everyone knows what I am referring to, but up to now nobody has brought the matter into the open. I believe that the Vassall Tribunal need never have been set up had the nettle been firmly grasped much earlier on. We have lost some time and I plead with the Home Secretary to use that Dispatch Box to clear up all the mystery and speculation over this particular case." Richard Crossman then commented that Paris Match magazine intended to publish a full account of Keeler's relationship with John Profumo, the Minister of War, in the government. Barbara Castle also asked questions if Keeler's disappearance had anything to do with Profumo.

The following day John Profumo issued a statement: "I understand that in the debate on the Consolidated Fund Bill last night, under the protection of parliamentary privilege, the Hon. Gentlemen the Members for Dudley (George Wigg) ... spoke of rumours connecting a Minister with a Miss Keeler and a recent trial at the Central Criminal Court. It was alleged that people in high places might have been responsible for concealing information concerning the disappearance of a witness and the perversion of justice. I understand that my name has been connected with the rumours about the disappearance of Miss Keeler. I would like to take this opportunity of making a personal statement about these matters. I last saw Miss Keeler in December 1961, and I have not seen her since. I have no idea where she is now. Any suggestion that I was in any way connected with or responsible for her absence from the trial at the Old Bailey is wholly and completely untrue. My wife and I first met Miss Keeler at a house party in July 1961, at Cliveden. Among a number of people there was Doctor Stephen Ward whom we already knew slightly, and a Mr Ivanov, who was an attaché at the Russian Embassy.... Between July and December, 1961, I met Miss Keeler on about half a dozen occasions at Doctor Ward's flat, when I called to see him and his friends. Miss Keeler and, I were on friendly terms. There was no impropriety whatsoever in my acquaintanceship with Miss Keeler."

Ward now decided to contact George Wigg. On the afternoon of 26th March Wigg received a phone call from Ward and a meeting was arranged for that evening. At the meeting Ward told Wigg about his relationship with Eugene Ivanov: "Ward said he first met Ivanov some time in 1961 at a Garrick Club lunch where, with a journalist specializing in Soviet affairs, they were guests of a Fleet Street editor. Ward found Ivanov a charming man. He taught him to play bridge and, soon, was seeing him two or three times a fortnight. They had fun with girls, although nothing improper ever took place, and they played bridge. They had visited only one night club, The Satyr, together, and then only for ten minutes. Ward said Ivanov never spoke critically about the British people. His one desire, which Ward shared, was to foster Anglo-Soviet friendship.... The Security Service, Ward asserted, knew all about his association with Ivanov. Representatives of the Security Service had enquired about his various meetings and Ward had promised to keep them informed and had kept that promise. He cited two occasions on which he thought friendship with Ivanov had been of value to Britain. At the time of the Berlin crisis in 1962 he, acting for Ivanov, had informed Sir Harold Caccia and other Foreign Office officials that the Soviet Union would adopt a conciliatory policy in return for Western guarantees about the integrity of the Oder-Neisse Line."

The second occasion he had provided information to the intelligence services was during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. "His second venture in Ivanov - directed diplomacy - again as a go between - occurred during the Cuban crisis. This time, according to Ward, he was the link between Ivanov as peacemaker and the British Government, represented by the Foreign Secretary, Lord Home, and the Prime Minister. Ivanov told Ward the Russians would respond to a British initiative calling a conference in London by halting the delivery of arms and stopping all shipments of war equipment to Cuba. I pressed even harder on this subject for the obvious reason that I did not believe that Ward, personally, had been in touch with the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister Ward became cagey again. He was not prepared to say because too many important people were involved."

However, Ward did say that he had written to Harold Wilson at the time to explain what he had been doing. "I told Harold Wilson that my visitor claimed to have written both to him and to the Prime Minister towards the end of the Cuban crisis. The letter was immediately extracted from the files and Wilson at once recalled a phrase about an approach made by Ward on behalf of Ivanov to the Foreign Office: 'I was the intermediary', Ward had written. Next day, Wilson handed Ward's letter to the Prime Minister and expressed his now acute anxiety about the implication that Ward was a contact between Ivanov and people of influence in this country."

On 27th March, 1963, Henry Brooke summoned Roger Hollis, the head of MI5, and Joseph Simpson, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, to a meeting in his office. Philip Knightley pointed out in An Affair of State (1987): "All these people are now dead and the only account of what took place is a semi-official one leaked in 1982 by MI5. According to this account, when Brooke tackled Hollis on the rumour that MI5 had been sending anonymous letters to Mrs Profumo, Hollis vigorously denied it."

Hollis then told Brooke that Christine Keeler had been having a sexual relationship with John Profumo. At the same time Keeler was believed to be having an affair with Eugene Ivanov, a Soviet spy. According to Keeler, Stephen Ward had asked her "to find out, through pillow talk, from Jack Profumo when nuclear warheads were being moved to Germany." Hollis added that "in any court case that might be brought against Ward over the accusation all the witnesses would be completely unreliable" and therefore he rejected the idea of using the Official Secrets Act against Ward. Brooke then asked the Police Commissioner's view on this. Joseph Simpson agreed with Hollis about the unreliable witnesses but added that it might be possible to get a conviction against Ward with a charge of living off immoral earnings. However, he added, that given the evidence available, a conviction was unlikely. Despite this response, Brooke urged Simpson to carry out a full investigation into Ward's activities.

Commander Fred C. Pennington was ordered to assemble a team to investigate Ward. The team was headed by Chief Inspector Samuel Herbert and included John Burrows, Arthur Eustace and Mike Glasse. Pennington told Herbert and his colleagues: "we've received this tip-off, but there'll be nothing in it." Glasse later told Philip Knightley that he thought that this was "a hint not to try too hard."

It emerged later that Herbert installed a spy in Ward's home during the investigation. They recruited Wendy Davies, a twenty-year old barmaid at the Duke of Marlborough pub, near Ward's flat. Davies knew Ward who had sketched her several times in the past. Davies later recalled: "I went to Stephen's flat practically every night up to his arrest. Each time I tried to listen in to telephone conversations, and to what Stephen was saying to friends who called. When I got back to my flat I wrote everything down in an exercise book, and rang the police the next day. I gave them a lot of information."

Chief Inspector Samuel Herbert interviewed Christine Keeler at her home on 1st April 1963. Four days later she was taken to Marylebone Police Station. Herbert told her that the police would need a complete list of men with whom she had sex or who had given her money during the time she knew Ward. This list included the names of John Profumo, Charles Clore and Jim Eynan.

On 23rd April Mandy Rice-Davies was arrested at Heathrow Airport on the way to Spain for a holiday, and formerly charged her with "possessing a document so closely resembling a driving licence as to be calculated to deceive." The magistrate fixed bail at £2,000. She later commented that "not only did I not have that much money, but the policeman in charge made it very clear to me that I would be wasting my energy trying to rustle it up." Rice-Davies spent the next nine days in Holloway Prison.

While she was in custody Rice-Davies was visited by Chief Inspector Samuel Herbert. His first words were: "Mandy, you don't like it in here very much, do you? Then you help us, and we'll help you." Herbert made it clear that Christine Keeler was helping them into their investigation into Stephen Ward. When she provided the information required she would be released from prison. At first Rice-Davies refused to cooperate but as she later pointed out: "I was ready to kick the system any way I could. But ten days of being locked up alters the perspective. Anger was replaced by fear. I was ready to do anything to get out." Rice-Davies added: "Although I was certain nothing I could say about Stephen could damage him any way... I felt I was being coerced into something, being pointed in a predetermined direction." Herbert asked Rice-Davies for a list of men with whom she had sex or who had given her money during the time she knew Ward. This list included the names of Peter Rachman and Emil Savundra.

On 19th May, 1963, Stephan Ward wrote a letter to the Home Secretary Henry Brooke, the leader of the Labour Party, Harold Wilson, and his local M.P., William Wavell Wakefield. "I have placed before the Home Secretary certain facts of the relationship between Miss Keeler and Mr Profumo since it is obvious now that my efforts to conceal these facts in the interests of Mr Profumo and the Government have made it appear that I myself have something to hide - which I have not. The result has been that I have been persecuted in a variety of ways, causing damage not only to myself but to my friends and patients-a state of affairs which I propose to tolerate no longer."

As a result of his earlier statement the newspapers decided not to print anything about John Profumo and Christine Keeler for fear of being sued for libel. However, George Wigg refused to let the matter drop and on 25th May, 1963, once again raised the issue of Keeler, saying this was not an attack on Profumo's private life but a matter of national security. On 5th June, John Profumo resigned as War Minister. His statement said that he had lied to the House of Commons about his relationship with Christine Keeler. The next day the Daily Mirror said: "What the hell is going on in this country? All power corrupts and the Tories have been in power for nearly twelve years."

Some newspapers called for Harold Macmillan to resign as prime minister. This he refused to do but he did ask Lord Denning to investigate the security aspects of the Profumo affair. Some of the prostitutes who worked for Stephen Ward began to sell their stories to the national press. Mandy Rice-Davies told the Daily Sketch that Christine Keeler had sexual relationships with John Profumo and Eugene Ivanov, an naval attaché at the Soviet embassy.

On 7th June, Christine Keeler told the Daily Express of her secret "dates" with Profumo. She also admitted that she had been seeing Eugene Ivanov at the same time, sometimes on the same day, as Profumo. In a television interview Ward told Desmond Wilcox that he had warned the security services about Keeler's relationship with Profumo. The following day Ward was arrested and charged with living off immoral earnings between 1961 and 1963. He was initially refused bail because it was feared that he might try to influence witnesses. Another concern was that he might provide information on the case to the media.

On 14th June, the London solicitor, Michael Eddowes, claimed that Christine Keeler told him that Eugene Ivanov had asked her to get information about nuclear weapons from Profumo. Eddowes added that he had written to Harold Macmillan to ask why no action had been taken on information he had given to Special Branch about this on 29th March. Soon afterwards Keeler told the News of the World that "I'm no spy, I just couldn't ask Jack for secrets."

In a FBI classified memo dated 20th June, 1963, from Alan Belmont to Clyde Tolson referred to the concerns of Defence Secretary Robert McNamara about the John Profumo case. It stated "Mr. McNamara referred to a memorandum from the FBI dated June 14, 1963, advising that Air Force personnel may have had relationships with Christine Keeler." The next section is blacked out but it goes onto say: "McNamara said he felt like he was sitting on a bomb in this matter as he could not tell what would come out of it and he wanted to be sure that every effort was being made to get information from the British particularly as it affected U.S. personnel."

Chief Inspector Samuel Herbert also interviewed Vasco Lazzolo, who was one of Ward's friends who agreed to testify for the defence. Herbert told Lazzolo that if he was determined to give evidence on Ward's behalf, then he might have to be discredited. Herbert warned that the police might have to "find" some pornographic material in his studio and prosecute him.

Ward asked James Burge, one of his patients, to represent him when he appeared at the the Magistrate's Court. Although he was not a Q.C., Ward decided to retain him for the trial. The trial of Ward began at the Old Bailey on 22nd July 1963. Christine Keeler admitted in court that she had sex with John Profumo, Charles Clore and Jim Eynan. In all three cases the men gave her money and gifts. During cross-examination she confessed that some of this money was paid to Ward as she owed him money for rent, electricity and food while she was living at his flat.

Mandy Rice-Davies also admitted receiving money and gifts from Peter Rachman and Emil Savundra. As she was living with Ward at the time she gave him some of this money for unpaid rent. As Rice-Davies pointed out: "Much was made of the fact that I was paying him a few pounds a week whilst I was living in Wimpole Mews. But I said before and say it again - Stephen never did anything for nothing and we agreed on the rent the day I arrived. He most certainly never influenced me to sleep with anyone, nor ever asked me to do so." She added: "Stephen was never a blue-and-white diamond, but a pimp? Ridiculous.... As for Christine, she was always borrowing money (from Stephen Ward)."

Ronna Ricardo had said that she had sex for money and then gave it to Ward at a preliminary hearing. However, she retracted this information at the trial and claimed that Chief Inspector Samuel Herbert had forced the statement from her by threats against the Ricardo family. According to Philip Knightley: "Ricardo said that Herbert told her that if she did not agree to help them then the police would take action against her family. Her younger sister, on probation and living with her, would be taken into care. They might even make application to take her baby away from her because she had been an unfit mother."

At the trial Vickie Barrett claimed that Ward had picked her up in Oxford Street and had taken her home to have sex with his friends. Barrett was unable to name any of these men. She added that Ward was paid by these friends and he kept some of the money for her in a little drawer. Ward admitted knowing Barrett and having sex with her. However, he denied arranging for her to have sex with other men or taking money from her. Sylvia Parker, who had been staying at Ward's flat at the time Barrett claimed she was brought there to have sex with other men. She called Barrett's statements "untrue, a complete load of rubbish".

Christine Keeler claims that she had never seen Barrett before: "She (Barrett) described Stephen handing out horsewhips, canes, contraceptives and coffee and how, having collected her weapons, she had treated the waiting clients. It sounded, and was, nonsense. I had lived with Stephen and never seen any evidence of anything like that." Mandy Rice-Davies agreed with Keeler: "Much of what she (Barrett) said was discredited. It was obvious to anyone that Stephen, with the police breathing down his neck and the press on his doorstep, would hardly have the opportunity or the inclination for this sort of thing."

Ludovic Kennedy, the author of The Trial of Stephen Ward (1964) has argued that James Burge was unable to compete with the prosecuting counsel Mervyn Griffith-Jones: "In short, Mr. Burge was a very nice man; indeed, as the trial went on, I began to think that alongside Mr. Griffith-Jones, he was almost too nice a man. He was a civilised being, a person of wit and humour. I had been told by one of his colleagues that he was one of the few men at the Bar who could laugh a case out of court. The atmosphere here, as I think he realised, was not conducive to this sort of approach, but I was told he had tried it once or twice at the Magistrate's Court with some success. In addition to his quip about Mr. Griffith-Jones making a honeymoon sound obscene, he had also said that he had no objection to some of Mr Griffith-Jones's leading questions, as they were not leading very far. Mr. Griffith-Jones himself would have been incapable of either of these two remarks. But equally Mr. Burge could not match Mr. Griffith-Jones's cold relentless plodding, his battering away at the walls until, by sheer persistence, they began to crack. It was this, in the last analysis, that made one admire Mr. Griffith-Jones as much as one deplored him. Because his own attitude to the case was committed, one became committed in one's attitude towards him. It was this outward lack of commitment, not in matter but in manner, that at times led one to feel that Mr. Burge was doing himself literally less than justice. They say that the days of the committed lawyer are over: yet one would have liked to see Ward's defence accompanied by some passion, with his counsel as contemptuous of the charges laid against him as the prosecution were contemptuous of Ward himself. As it was, while I had no doubts which of the two counsel was the more intelligent, urbane and congenial, equally I had no doubts, where the jury was concerned, which was the more effective advocate."

In his cross-examination of Stephan Ward, Burge asked him about his annual income. Ward replied that he was earning about £4,000 from his practice and another £1,500 or so from his drawings - a total of between £5,000 and £6,000 a year. Burge then asked: "If the prosecution's picture of a man procuring, and the picture of people in high places and very wealthy men was true, would you have needed to carry on your practice and work as an osteopath?" Ward replied: "If that were true, evidently not."

Philip Knightley, the author of An Affair of State (1987) pointed out: "That ended the prosecution case. How strong was it? Griffith-Jones had succeeded in establishing that Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies took money for sex. He had shown that both girls gave money to Ward. Even though, given that in law the dividing line between living with a prostitute and living on a prostitute is very thin, the prosecution's weak point was that both girls owed Ward - one way or another - far more money than they ever paid him."

Ward told his defence counsel, James Burge: "One of my great perils is that at least half a dozen of the (witnesses) are lying and their motives vary from malice to cupidity and fear... In the case of both Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies there is absolutely no doubt that they are committed to stories which are already sold or could be sold to newspapers and that my conviction would free these newspapers to print stories which they would otherwise be quite unable to print (for libel reasons)."

Stephen Ward was very upset by the judge's summing-up that included the following: "If Stephen Ward was telling the truth in the witness box, there are in this city many witnesses of high estate and low who could have come and testified in support of his evidence." Several people present in the court claimed that Judge Archie Pellow Marshall was clearly biased against Ward. France Soir reported: "However impartial he tried to appear, Judge Marshall was betrayed by his voice."

After the day's court proceedings, Ward contacted Tom Critchley, a Home Office official working with Lord Denning on the official investigation. Later, Critchley refused to comment what was said in that telephone conversation. That night Ward met the journalist Tom Mangold: "Stephen was very relaxed... He wasn't walking around in a froth. He was very calm and collected, just writing his letters and putting them in envelopes. I wanted to pretend that I hadn't seen what I'd seen. My excuse, which was not a good excuse, was that I was on a yellow card from my wife. I reckoned I could risk being home two hours late. But I knew the marriage wouldn't survive if I showed up any later. So all I did was to bleat at Stephen not to do anything foolish."

After Mangold left Ward wrote to his friend, Noel Howard-Jones: "It is really more than I can stand - the horror, day after day at the court and in the streets. It is not only fear, it is a wish not to let them get me. I would rather get myself. I do hope I have not let people down too much. I tried to do my stuff but after Marshall's summing-up, I've given up all hope." Ward then took an overdose of sleeping tablets. He was in a coma when the jury reached their verdict of guilty of the charge of living on the immoral earnings of Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies on Wednesday 31st July. Three days later, Ward died in St Stephen's Hospital. According to Warwick Charlton, Ward's old enemy, John Lewis, was delighted at the news of his death: "He was celebrating. He made no bones about it."

Ward's defence team found a letter that he had written to Vickie Barrett: "I don't know what it was or who it was that made you do what you did. But if you have any decency left, you should tell the truth like Ronna Riccardo. You owe this not to me, but to everyone who may be treated like you or like me in the future." The letter was passed to Barry O'Brien, a journalist who worked for the Daily Telegraph. He gave the letter to Barrett. He later reported she read the note and began to cry. "It was all lies but I never thought he would die." Barrett said she had been coerced into giving her evidence by the police and agreed to go to see Ward's solicitor, then went to another room to get her coat. According to O'Brien, an older women came out, and said: "Miss Barrett was not going anywhere." Barrett later retracted her retraction.

In his book, The Trial of Stephen Ward (1964), Ludovic Kennedy considers the guilty verdict of Ward to be a miscarriage of justice. In An Affair of State (1987), the journalist, Philip Knightley argues: "Witnesses were pressured by the police into giving false evidence. Those who had anything favourable to say were silenced. And when it looked as though Ward might still survive, the Lord Chief Justice shocked the legal profession with an unprecedented intervention to ensure Ward would be found guilty."

The entertainer Michael Bentine, who worked as an intelligence officer for MI9 under Airey Neave during the Second World War and had known Ward for sometime, kept up his contacts after the war, later commented: "A Special Branch friend of mine told me Ward was assisted in his dying. I think he was murdered." Paul Mann, a close friend of Stephen Ward, says he was told shortly after his death, that "Ward was injected with an air bubble, by hypodermic, with the intention of causing a fatal embolism. The needle broke, and the assassins left in a hurry. It was enough, though, to send the drugged Ward on his way. It was a botched affair."

Chief Inspector Samuel Herbert died of a heart attack on 16th April 1966 at the age of 48. In his will he left only £300, which was commensurate with the police salaries at that time. However, after his death his bank account was discovered to contain no less than £30,000 (660,000 by today's values). According to Philip Knightley: "By coincidence, in the tape recordings which Christine Keeler made with her manager, Robin Drury, Keeler says that John Lewis, Ward's bitter enemy, had offered her £30,000 for information leading to Ward's conviction and the bringing down of the Conservative Government."

In 1987 Anthony Summers and Stephen Dorril published their book on the Stephen Ward case, Honeytrap. During their research they managed to speak to several members of MI5, including Keith Wagstaffe, Wards case-officer. The book confirms that Ward had been involved in an operation that was attempting to persuade Eugene Ivanov to become a double-agent.

As a result of the book being published the authors were contacted by a former MI6 officer who claimed that Ward was murdered by a contract agent called Stanley Rytter, whose cover was as a freelance journalist and photographer. Rytter had died in 1984 but Summers and Dorril investigate the allegation and got the story confirmed by one of his associates, Serge Paplinski.

The intelligence officer then went on to say: "It was decided that Ward had to die.... He admitted (Rytter) that Ward was killed on the instructions of his department. He convinced Ward that he ought to have a good night's sleep and take some sleeping pills. The agent said he let Ward doze off and then woke him again and told him to take his tablets. Another half an hour later or two, he woke Ward again, and told him he'd forgotten to take his sleeping pills. So it went on - till Ward had overdosed. It might sound far-fetched, but it's the easiest thing in the world to do. Once the victim is drowsy he will agree to almost anything."

I have added some extra information on my Keith Wagstaffe page.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SPYwagstaffe.htm

Pat makes the really important point that theories should be adapted as new evidence appears. Too many people see their theories as some sort of religious faith and as soon as someone disagrees with them they go into attack mode.

Surrey History Centre wins Heritage Lottery Fund grant to commemorate First World War's greatest playwright.

A better understanding of the greatest play to emerge from the trenches of the First World War will be the outcome of a Surrey County Council heritage project, thanks to a grant of £59,600 from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF).

The councils Surrey Heritage has been awarded the money for a First World War commemoration project entitled To Journey's End and Beyond: the Life and Legacy of R C Sherriff. The project will focus on Sherriff's great play Journeys End, set in a British dugout on the eve of the great German offensive of March 1918.

Sherriff's papers are held at the councils Surrey History Centre in Woking, the home of Surrey Heritage, and will be catalogued and preserved as part of the project. Using this unique collection, Surrey Heritage will work with The R C Sherriff Trust, Kingston Grammar School and schools in Elmbridge to bring Sherriff's own experiences on the Western Front to a wider audience, through a newly commissioned play and dramatic workshops. Volunteers will have the opportunity to learn archive conservation and packaging skills to make the precious records accessible to the public.

As a junior officer in the East Surrey Regiment, Sherriff spent four gruelling months on the Western Front until he was wounded at Passchendaele in August 1917. His papers contain hundreds of letters to his parents and friends, which he later used in the writing of Journey's End. The play was first performed in 1928 with a young Laurence Olivier in the lead role and remains a key part of the literary legacy of the First World War. Sherriff went on to be a successful Hollywood scriptwriter, responsible for such classics as 'The Dambusters' and 'Goodbye Mr Chips'.

Helyn Clack, Surrey County Councils Cabinet Member for Community Services, said It is important that we do not lose sight of the horrors of the First World War and the experiences and sacrifices of those who fought. This generous grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund makes it possible for us to properly preserve this remarkable collection and use it to promote understanding of what it was really like to serve on the Western Front.

Stuart McLeod, Head of the Heritage Lottery Fund South East, said:

This impressive collection of R C Sherriffs works, once restored and catalogued, will give people an incredible insight into his life and his personal experiences of fighting on the Western Front. The First World War changed the face of modern history touching the lives of millions of people and we at the HLF are committed to funding a variety of projects which will create a deeper understanding of the heritage of the conflict. Capturing individual stories such as R C Sherriffs will form an important strand of the commemorations happening across the country.

For further information about the project contact Michael Page, Surrey Heritage, Tel: 01483 518756, email: mpage@surreycc.gov.uk

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWsherriff.htm

The obvious implication of these "weighted' search algorithms makes it advisable for researchers and casual users alike to scan through several pages of hits if you prefer to see what else is available besides the target sites you are being directed to.

Most serious researchers do this of course. However, the problem is the evidence suggests that most people never go past the first page. According to research provided by Google, people don't stay on a page if it does not load straight away. The mass media sites can afford to employ the best people to make sure this happens. Most small websites don't have access to that technology.

That's fascinating stuff John, so MFF, which is almost entirely actual released government documents has a lower domain authority than McAdams site but also a very much lower

domain authority than the news sources - or Amazon for that matter.

So, primary government documents and investigative reports would have half the authority of Wikipedia and considerably less than the commercial news site or Amazon.

Could you check out where the National Security Archive site stands.

In any event, it certainly looks like that was a very effective way of neutralizing primary source material. One can ponder who the Domain Authority gurus are?

- Thanks for sharing your research, Larry

National Security Archive 91. This is really a problem of communicating information. This depends a great deal in the way you write the page. I would rather tell you more about this by email. We don't want lone nutters knowing how to do it.

I established Spartacus Educational in 1997. A new company called Google contacted me in 1999. They had developed a new way of searching the web. While conventional search engines ranked results by counting how many times the search terms appeared on the page, the two theorized about a better system that analyzed the relationships between websites. They called this new technology PageRank. The ranking of search-terms was now based on the number and quality of the links that you had. As I was one of the first to produce free educational materials for the web, I had 157,000 links from universities, colleges and schools. I therefore came up very high on their searches. At the time they had a low profile and asked if they could advertise their search-engine on my website. This did not last for long because Google soon became the latest internet sensation.

Wikipedia began in 2001. Over the next few years, Wikipedia always appeared below me in Google searches. This included pages on John F. Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby, etc. For a time I began to think that the arrival of the web was seen as a way of breaking up the existing power structure. Here was I, a one man business, who was challenging the way the dominant ideology was communicating the past.

A couple of years ago that all changed. Google made changes to the way they searched the net. Now, I was always below Wikipedia. However, it was not too bad for me and the website continued to provide me with a reasonable living. For some websites, the changes brought an end to their business.

What had happened? At first, Google refused to say what it had done. If you do a search for the Assassination of John F. Kennedy you will get a very good clue. As you see Wikipedia is first and after this you get all the media corporations who have said anything recently about the assassination.

Google still use the number of links a website has but they have also added a new factor. They call it domain authority. These websites have the following domain authority.

Wikipedia 100

BBC 100

New York Times 100

CNN 100

Washington Post 99

The Times 98

The Guardian 96

Amazon 95

The Daily Mail 94

Oxford University 94

The Sun 92

M&S 87

Cambridge University 84

Spartacus Educational 80

This has implications for those wanting to discover about the JFK Assassination.

Spartacus JFK Index 80

Spartacus Blog 71

JFK Countercoup 70

McAdams JFK site 70

JFK Lancer 57

Educational Forum 54

Mary Ferrell 51

Citizens for Truth (JFK) 40

JFK Facts 38

Pat Speer 23

This is a real problem for new websites. How do you build up links to your site? In the past, people used blogs and forums to improve their ranking at Google. However, Google no longer takes any notice of these links. They rightly point out that SEO companies were using blogs and forums to increase the ranking of their clients sites. Google only take note of links from sites with high domain authority. The problem is that those sites are reluctant to give too many links (they do not see it in their commercial interests to do so).

In the pre-internet days it was possible to establish small book publishing companies to get your message out. It was always difficult but it is now virtually impossible. Of course you can always bring out e-books via Amazon. However, you have a serious problem letting the public know that the book exists. (Amazon search-ranking is based on sales.)

Thanks very much, John, that's high praise indeed and a great endorsement, it means a lot. I'm glad you agree with my approach, I wanted the film to work for both researchers and a general audience new to the case and the feedback so far suggests that worked. While RFK Must Die was the story of my investigation into the Sirhan case, Killing Oswald presents the views of a number of authors I admire alongside archive material - film and audio - that I think helps us understand Oswald and the other characters.

I look forward to discussing the film here as members catch up with it. And thanks, B.A., hope you enjoy it.

Did you approach the BBC, ITV, C4 and C5 about showing the film?

Killing Oswald is the best documentary I have seen on the assassination of JFK. It also comes over as a rational and objective view of the assassination. Shane OSullivan uses the historian David Kaiser, to take you through the evidence. This is a masterstroke as Kaiser makes it clear that he thinks Oswald was involved in the assassination. However, he also addresses the evidence that shows that the FBI and the CIA were officially or unofficially, probably involved in the assassination and definitely played an important role in the cover-up. Most documentaries make it obvious that they have a theory they want to promote. This not only turns off those who believe that Oswald was a lone assassin, but upsets those who believe in some alternative theory.

Shane also uses historians such as John Newman, Dick Russell and Joan Mellon to show that there are those who doubt if Oswald was one of the gunmen. The film also has some great interviews with Ruth Paine, George De Mohrenschildt, Antonio Veciana (recently filmed). Probably the best material is that of Oswald talking. To me, these interviews, show that Oswald was clearly a patsy. The early interviews, where he argues he is a Marxist, provides that he was a well-trained undercover agent.

The video is an excellent starting point for someone who is new to the case. The highest compliment that I can make is that if I made a documentary on the JFK assassination, it would look very much like this.

You can view the video here:

http://www.killingoswald.co.uk/

I haven't seen Gratz on this board recently, and that's a shame now, because I think Ms. Buchanan really put it to him. In fact, I rarely see anyone defending the idealism of so-called Communists, and I feel this personally because my parents were very much of that milieu, left the party in the mid-fifties after realizing that their 'best friend' in the party was an FBI agent, but never abandoned their idealism. It was their legacy to me. Ms. Buchanan's comment that her father believed that the ones that towed the party line the most were often agents could not be any more true.

I agree. I have never been a member of the Communist Party. In fact, I find it difficult to accept the discipline of any political party. However, I do accept that people originally joined the CP for the best of reasons (unlike the mainstream parties where it is often a career choice). However, on my website I have been highly critical of CP members' actions during the 1930s in the way they supported Stalin's policies and ignored the terrible things he was doing in the Soviet Union (he also did some terrible things in Spain as well - see George Orwell on this).

I also find it difficult to understand how members stayed in the CP after the Soviet-Nazi Pact. I know most left in 1956 but why did it take so long? Some even remained in the CP after the events in Czechoslovakia in 1968. The main crime of the Bolsheviks is that the contaminated for all time the idea that communism was a good idea. Nor do I think it would have been much different if Trotsky had gained power after Lenin's death. As Rosa Luxemburg pointed out, a revolution carried out by an elite will always end in a dictatorship.

I think the main reason that people stayed in the CP was McCarthyism. It was such a hateful creed that they were unwilling to give into the pressure it brought. To them, they would prefer to be seen as victims than traitors.

It might be worth watching this:

http://www.killingoswald.com/

Welcome to the Forum. Thank you for the extra information that I have added to my page on your father.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKbuchananT.htm

You can find the original debate on your father here:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=2846

I will be promoting your father's book on my Spartacus Educational Facebook page. It will also appear on every one of my 13,000 pages today.

https://www.facebook.com/SpartacusEducational

Check out this website selling educational videos.

http://www.learnourhistory.com/

This was is especially interesting.

http://www.learnourhistory.com/The_Reagan_Revolution.html

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on.

Life is extinct on other planets because their scientists were more advanced than ours.

The goal of education is the advancement of knowledge and the dissemination of truth.

Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind.

Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.

Too often we... enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.

Communism has never come to power in a country that was not disrupted by war or corruption, or both.

Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly.

History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future.

If we cannot now end our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.

The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.

The basic problems facing the world today are not susceptible to a military solution.

We would like to live as we once lived, but history will not permit it.

Do you realize the responsibility I carry? I'm the only person standing between Richard Nixon and the White House.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAkennedyJ.htm

It is strange that some stories are ignored by most researchers. The same is true of Grant Stockdale. Even if they have not anything to do with the assassination, they are still interesting.

Doug, you are one of the few members of the Forum who is interested in the wider picture. Maybe it is because of your legal training.

In 1933 Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. Henry Ford's The International Jew became a stock item of Nazi Germany propaganda. It has been claimed that "every school child in Germany came into contact with it many times during his education." The manager of the Ford Company in Germany in the mid-1930s, Edmund C. Heine, explained that the book had the backing of the German government and was an important factor in educating the nation "to understand the Jewish problem as it should be understood."

Carl Krauch claimed that he arranged for the Ford Company to retain its independence during Hitler's rule in the 1930s: "I myself knew Henry Ford and admired him. I went to see Goring personally about that. I told Goring that I myself knew his son Edsel, too, and I told Goring that if we took the Ford independence away from them in Germany, it would aggrieve friendly relations with American industry in the future. I counted on a lot of success for the adaptation of American methods in Germany's industries, but that could be done only in friendly cooperation. Goring listened to me and then he said: 'I agree. I shall see to it that the German Ford Company will not be incorporated in the Hermann Goring Company.' So I participated regularly in the supervisory board meetings to inform myself about the business processes of Henry Ford and, if possible, to take a stand for the Henry Ford Works after the war had begun. Thus, we succeeded in keeping the Ford Works working and operating independently of our government's seizure."

In the 1930s Ford opposed Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. He was especially opposed to the National Labor Relations Act which established the rights of workers to join trade unions and to bargain collectively with their employers through representatives of their own choosing. Workers were now protected from their employers and as a result union membership grew rapidly. Ford refused to recognize the United Auto Workers and used armed police to deal with industrial unrest. Ford told a journalist from Collier's Weekly that left-wing unions "are organized by Jewish financiers, not labor". He added that "a union is a neat thing for a Jew to have on hand when he comes around to get his clutches on an industry."

In 1938 Adolf Hitler awarded Ford the Grand Cross of the Supreme Order of the German Eagle. Ford was the first American and only the fourth person in the world to receive this medal. Benito Mussolini, another of Hitler's financiers, had been granted the same award earlier that year. Harold L. Ickes, Secretary of the Interior, denounced Ford and other Americans "who obsequiously have accepted tokens of contemptuous distinction at a time when the bestower of them counts that day lost when he can commit no new crime against humanity." Ford was also criticized by the Jewish entertainer, Eddie Cantor, who called Ford "a damn fool for permitting the world's greatest gangster to give him a citation." Cantor then added "the more men like Ford we have, the more we must organize and fight."

According to Charles Higham, the author of Trading with the Enemy (1983), Ford was more willing to help Nazi Germany than the British during the early stages of the Second World War: "Edsel and his father, following their meetings with Gerhardt Westrick at Dearborn in 1940, refused to build aircraft engines for England and instead built supplies of the 5-ton military trucks that were the backbone of German army transportation. They arranged to ship tires to Germany despite the shortages; 30 percent of the shipments went to Nazi-controlled territories abroad."

In 1940 Ford built a new automobile factory at Poissy in the German Occupied Zone. The plant began making airplane engines for the German government. It also built trucks for the German Army. Ford arranged for Nazi war criminal, Carl Krauch and Maurice Dollfus, to run the factory. It made a profit of 50 million francs in the first year of trading. When the plant was bombed by the Royal Air Force, Dollfus arranged for the German government to pay for compensation for the damage done.

On 16th February 1941, Henry Ford delivered a bitter attack on the Jews to The Manchester Guardian saying that the United States should make Britain and Germany fight until they both collapsed. To show his commitment to the America First Committee, Ford employed Charles Lindbergh as a member of his executive staff. This caused great controversy when on 17th December, 1941, ten days after Pearl Harbour, Lindbergh made a speech where he argued: "There is only one danger in the world-that is the yellow danger. China and Japan are really bound together against the white race. There could only have been one efficient weapon against this alliance.... Germany.... the ideal setup would have been to have had Germany take over Poland and Russia, in collaboration with the British, as a bloc against the yellow people and Bolshevism. But instead, the British and the fools in Washington had to interfere. The British envied the Germans and wanted to rule the world forever. Britain is the real cause of all the trouble in the world today."

The Ford plant at Willow Run produced over 8,000 B-24 Liberator heavy bombers during the war. However, he continued to supply the German Army with trucks and armored from its plant in Poissy and Oran in Algeria. In April 1943, Henry Morgenthau and Lauchlin Currie conducted a lengthy investigation into the Ford subsidiaries in French territory. The report concluded that "their production is solely for the benefit of Germany and the countries under its occupation" and the Germans have "shown clearly their wish to protect the Ford interests". Despite the report nothing was done about the matter.

Article in today's Guardian.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/13/mi6-spy-dead-bag-locked-himself-gareth-williams

The MI6 spy found dead in a bag three years ago probably locked himself in the holdall and died as a result of a tragic accident, Scotland Yard has said.

Outlining the results of a three-year investigation on Wednesday, the Metropolitan police said Gareth Williams most likely died alone in his flat.

But Detective Assistant Commissioner Martin Hewitt said the police could not "fundamentally and beyond doubt" rule out the possibility that a third party was involved in his death.

Williams's naked body was found in the padlocked bag, with the keys discovered under his body, in the otherwise empty bath in his flat in Pimlico, central London, in August 2010.

Last year, a coroner concluded that Williams was probably unlawfully killed and his death the result of a criminal act. Following an eight-day inquest, the Westminster coroner, Dr Fiona Wilcox, said he was probably either suffocated or poisoned, before a third party locked and placed the bag in the bath.

But Hewitt said Scotland Yard's three-year inquiry had come to a different conclusion and that Williams was "most probably" alone when he died.

"Despite all of this considerable effort, it is still the case that there is insufficient evidence to be definitive on the circumstances that led to Gareth's death," he said.

"Rather, what we are left with is either individual pieces of evidence, or a lack of such evidence, that can logically support one of a number of hypotheses."

Hewitt added that the investigation had added "some clarity and detail" to the case, but that "no evidence has been identified to establish the full circumstances of Gareth's death beyond all reasonable doubt".

A forensic examination of Williams's flat, a security service safe house, has concluded that there was no sign of forced entry or DNA that pointed to a third party present at the time of the spy's death.

Scotland Yard's inquiry also found no evidence of Williams's fingerprints on the padlock of the bag or the rim of the bath, which the coroner last year said supported her assertion of "third-party involvement" in the death. Hewitt said it was theoretically possible for Williams to lower himself into the holdall without touching the rim of the bath.

Winding down the lengthy investigation, which has drawn interviews and statements from 27 of Williams's colleagues in MI6 and GCHQ, Hewitt said the death remained a tragedy that would be kept under review by detectives.

In a statement, Williams's family said they were disappointed with the police findings and that they agreed with the coroner's conclusions that he was most likely killed unlawfully."We are naturally disappointed that it is still not possible to state with certainty how Gareth died and the fact that the circumstances of his death are still unknown adds to our grief," the family said.

"We note that the investigation has been conducted with further interviews upon some of the witnesses who gave evidence at the inquest and that the investigation team were at last able to interview directly members of GCHQ and SIS [MI6].

"We consider that on the basis of the facts at present known the coroner's verdict accurately reflects the circumstances of Gareth's death."

In a press briefing at Scotland Yard, Hewitt admitted it was "a cause of some regret" that the police were not able to definitively explain the circumstances surrounding the 31-year-old's death.

He rejected suggestions that the security services had "pulled the wool" over his eyes, following concerns over how MI6 and counter-terrorism officers had handled some evidence during the initial investigation. It emerged on Wednesday that police only gained access to Williams's spy agency personnel and vetting files after the coroner's inquest ended last May.

Williams, a maths prodigy and fitness enthusiast originally from Anglesey, was a private person with few other close friends aside from his family, police said. In interviews, MI6 and GCHQ colleagues described him as a "conscientious and decent man" and detectives were unable to identify anyone with any animosity towards him or a motive for causing him harm.

As part of the fresh investigation, a forensic sweep of Williams's flat discovered 10 to 15 unidentified traces of DNA, which are being kept under examination, but none on the North Face holdall or around the bath area of the en suite bathroom of the flat's main bedroom. There was also no evidence of a "deep clean" of the flat to wipe all trace of DNA.

Hewitt said: "There are really three hypotheses that you can use here. One is that Gareth, for whatever reason, got himself into that bag and then was unable to get himself out and died as a result of that.

"One is that Gareth, with someone else, got into the bag consensually, then something went wrong and he died as a result of that. The third is that someone murdered Gareth by putting him in that bag. I would argue that any physical absence [of evidence of] a third party being present tends to make the hypotheses that there is a third party present less likely."

He added: "The coroner drew an inference. I am now drawing a different inference."

At the coroner's inquest, two experts tried 400 times to lock themselves into the 32in by 19in holdall without success, with one remarking that even Harry Houdini "would have struggled" to squeeze himself inside. But days after the inquest, footage emerged of a retired army sergeant climbing into the bag and locking it from the inside.

Hewitt said it was now established that it was theoretically possible for a person to climb into the bag and that it was "more probable" that Williams did this before suffocating as a result of the accident. It emerged during the inquest that Williams had an interest in escapology, but the police said it would be speculation to link his death to a failed attempt to escape from the locked holdall.

When I first wrote about Grant Stockdale there was virtually nothing on the web about him.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKstockdale.htm

He has been discussed on the Forum here:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=943

However, I see that Wikipedia now has a page on him. References suggest it was written by his son, Colonel Lee L. Stockdale. He does not mention the scandal that forced him to resign as Ambassador to Ireland. Although he does not go into detail, he does admit he might have been murdered.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant_Stockdale

The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, was published in Russia in 1903. It is believed that the man behind the forgery was Pyotr Ivanovich Rachkovsky, the head of the Paris section of Okhrana. It is argued he commissioned his agent, Matvei Golovinski, to produce the forgery. The plan was to present reformers in Russia, as part of a powerful global Jewish conspiracy and fomented anti-Semitism to deflect public attention from Russia's growing social problems. This was reinforced when several leaders of the 1905 Russian Revolution, such as Leon Trotsky, were Jews. Norman Cohn, the author of Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World-Conspiracy (1966) has argued that the book played an important role in persuading fascists to seek the massacre of the Jewish people.

Two men who believed the book was genuine was Henry Ford and Adolf Hitler. Ford commented: "The only statement I care to make about the Protocols is that they fit in with what is going on... They have fitted the world situation up to this time. They fit it now." Ford also sponsored the printing of 500,000 copies of The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion in the United States.

Hitler told Herman Rauschning that he was "appalled" when he first read the Protocols: "The stealthiness of the enemy and his ubiquity! I saw at once we must copy it - in our own way of course." He admitted that the Protocols had convinced him the fight against the Jews was "the critical battle for the fate of the world!" Rauschning commented: "Don't you think you are attributing rather too much importance to the Jews? Hitler responded angrily: "No, No, No! It is impossible to exaggerate the formidable quality of the Jew as an enemy." Rauschning then took another approach: "But the Protocols are a manifest forgery... It couldn't possibly be genuine." Hitler replied that he did not care if it was "historically true" as its "intrinsic truth" was more important: "We must beat the Jew with his own weapon. I saw that the moment I had read the book."

Both Ford and Hitler believed that Jewish capitalists and Jewish communists were partners aiming to gain control over the nations of the world. Ford placed more emphasis on Jewish financiers and bankers, because as an industrialist he naturally came into close contact with them. Hitler, on the other hand, was more concerned with Jews who were members of the Social Democrat Party (SDP) and the German Communist Party (KPD) as they were a powerful opposition force in Germany in the 1920s.

Ford was especially worried by the Russian Revolution. If the ideas of Karl Marx established itself in America he would obviously be one of the first to suffer. In his book, My Life and Work (1922), he wrote: "We learned from Russia that it is the minority and not the majority who determine destructive action... There is in this country a sinister element that desires to creep in between the men who work with their hands and the men who think and plan... The same influence that drove the brains, experience, and ability out of Russia is busily engaged in raising prejudice here. We must not suffer the stranger, the destroyer, the hater of happy humanity to divide our people. In unity is America's strength - and freedom."

According to Norman Cohn, the author of Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World-Conspiracy (1966) Ford deplored "the lack of moral standards" in modern commerce and blamed this on the Jews. Ford told one reporter: "When there's wrong in a country you'll find Jews... The Jew is a huckster who doesn't want to produce but to make something of what somebody else produces." In the Dearborn Independent Ford wrote: "A Jew has no attachment for the things he makes, for he doesn't make any; he deals in the things which other men make and regards them solely on the side of their money-making value."

According to James Pool, the author of Who Financed Hitler: The Secret Funding of Hitler's Rise to Power (1979): "In the minds of Ford and Hitler, Communism was a completely Jewish creation. Not only was its founder, Karl Marx, the grandson of a rabbi, but more importantly Jews held leading positions, as well as a high percentage of the membership, in the Communist parties throughout the world. The International Jew stated that since the time of the French Revolution Jews had been involved in numerous movements to overthrow ruling regimes." In Mein Kampf Hitler pointed out: "In Russian bolshevism we must see Jewry's twentieth-century effort to take world domination unto itself."

Both Hitler and Ford contended that 75% of the Communists in Russia were Jews. This is not supported by the facts. At the time of the Russian Revolution there were only seven million Jews among the total Russian population of 136 million. Although police statistics showed the ratio of Jews participating in the revolutionary movement to the total Jewish population was six times that of the other nationalities in Russia, they were no way near the figures suggested by Hitler and Ford. Lenin admitted that "Jews provided a particularly high percentage of leaders of the revolutionary movement". He explained this by arguing "to their credit that today Jews provide a relatively high percentage of representatives of internationalism compared with other nations."

Of the 350 delegates at the Social Democratic Party in London in 1903, 25 out of 55 delegates were Jews. Of the 350 delegates in the 1907 congress, nearly a third were Jews. However, an important point which the anti-Semites overlooked is that of the Jewish delegates supported the Mensheviks, whereas only 10% supported the Bolsheviks, who led the revolution in 1917. According to a party census carried out in 1922, Jews made up 7.1% of members who had joined before the revolution. Jewish leaders of the revolutionary period, Leon Trotsky, Gregory Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev, Karl Radek, Grigori Sokolnikov and Genrikh Yagoda were all purged by Joseph Stalin in the 1930s.

Hitler and Ford also believed that the Jews had been responsible for Germany losing the First World War. The German historian, Joachim Riecker, believes that the core of Hitler's hatred was based on the belief that the Jews were responsible for Germany's defeat. Ford said in The International Jew that "the Jews were not German patriots during the war". They lost the war because "i) the spirit of Bolshevism which masqueraded under the name of German Socialism, ii) Jewish ownership and control of the Press, iii) Jewish control of the food supply and the industrial machinery of the country."

Ford was highly critical of the democratic system in the United States. According to Ford, democracy is nothing but a "levelling down of ability" Ford wrote in the Dearborn Independent that there could be "no greater absurdity and no greater disservice to humanity in general than to insist that all men are equal." Ford went on to argue that the Jews had used democracy to raise themselves up in society. He quotes the The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion as claiming the Jews stated: "We were the first to shout the words, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, among the people. These words have been repeated many times since by unconscious poll-parrots, flocking from all sides to this bait with which they have been ruined.... The presumably clever Gentiles did not understand the symbolism of the uttered words. Did not notice that in nature there is no equality."

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAford.htm

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERhitler.htm

According to this website, Nerin E. Gun's, Red Roses from Texas, was the first book on the assassination of President Kennedy. "No American publisher would touch his book Red Roses from Texas, so the book was published in London. A used copy, if you can find it, will cost you $750.00."

http://www.reformation.org/gun.html

Has anyone read this book?

Message from Tony Summers:

*Dropped from the updated Not in Your Lifetime is the alleged episode in Clinton, Louisiana, in which Oswald was apparently sighted in Clinton with Guy Banister and David Ferrie. I long ago went to Clinton myself for the BBC - and interviewed several of the relevant witnesses. They seemed fairly credible at the time.