Leslie Sharp

Researcher / author Jeff Meek called in to a Chigago radio show to ask Robert Blakey specifically about Jean Rene Soutre. He has the recording. For those unfamiliar, Jeff began studying he assassination in the early '70s and was befriended and mentored by Mary Ferrell. It was Mary who marveled that to her knowledge he was the first to land a response from the government to his requests for information or documents on Souetre. His interest in the French OAS captain has never wained. He is also an authority on Lee Oswald as evidenced in his book,The Manipulation of Lee Harvey Oswald: and the Cover-Up That Followed, published in August 2021. Meek's monthly series The JFK Files runs in the Hot Springs Village Voice focused on the assassination, and is the only series of its kind in the country. His dedication toward actually solving the crime in Dallas is rarely matched these days.

@Benjamin Cole read Tom Nichols, once a staunch Republican who studied fascism for a living and cautioned early on those who applied the very specific definition to Trump were diluting the meaning. He recently came out with an op-ed to sound the alarm following Trump's vermin and poisoning the blood rants over the past month. Nichols now admonishes Americans to be worried, very worried, and especially warns "do NOT shrug this off" as just another election cycle. Democracy is under greatest threat since the Civil War. Perhaps you're not paying attention or following an alt-right news feed?

@Richard BoothPerhaps many on this thread are unaware that Rob Reiner and Dick Russell had been collaborating on a Kennedy project since at least 2018, if not earlier, so I think you're in error when you subjectively opine Reiner is just "reading a script." When facts can't be disputed, attack the messenger seems to be a shared character flaw in this particular community.

@Richard Booth @Roger Odisio I But if those paid shooters had long histories and shared ideologies that guaranteed loyalty to death with those who funded them, would you still argue that who actually shot Kennedy in Dallas is insignificant to the cold case murder investigation? To begin the lisi: Jack Canon in service to Gen. Willoughby -- early days of the Cold War and member of JACK Command. I've noted in these deliberations there is rarely a throughline. How does a single established fact relate to another? How would Oswald standing outside the building relate to his role as the perfect patsy? How does Canon's decades long service to Gen. Willoughby (MacArthur's Little Fascist and a name that appears frequently in Lafitte's record) relate to Willoughby's personal longstanding friendship and alliance with Allen Dulles? Is it significant Willoughby was in correspondence with OUN/ABN Yarislov Stetsko and scheduled to appear with him at an extreme conservative European conference in October? How close was Stetsko to Spas Raikin? Does it matter that Hans-Ulrich Rudel, named in Lafitte records, finally after more than a decade, secured an entry visa and arrived in time for a conference at Wright Patterson on October 13, 1963? Does it matter that Rudel aligned with Skorzeny (who dominates Lafitte's world in 1963) to create Merex AG in MC with another arms merchant Gerhard Mertins? Should that history factor in to the analysis of Tom Davis and Lee Oswald meeting at the Luma or not? Should Marguerite's appearance in the spring of 1964 on "Kup" Kupcinet's radio show alongside Hjalmar Schacht -- once Hitler's favorite financier and nominal uncle to Otto and Ilse Skorzeny -- be brushed off as mere coincidence when it was H. Keith Thompson, one time registered agent for Hitler's Reich, who as Marguerite's publicist for a brief period arranged the "Kup" gig? Thompson as most are likely aware was in the York area of NYC when young Oswald was roaming the streets and in close proximity to Dan Burros who among other tasks, printed the fliers in support of French stronghold in Algeria to be dropped to SS Otto Remer then ensconced in Oran, another client and ideological comrade of Thompson, Rudel and Skorzeny. Does it matter that Thompson signed Rudel's visa ap or that the latter was in the States as preparations escalated to shoot Kennedy in Dallas? The compartmentalization of facts is tired and worn, and 60 years on, still ineffective.

Thanks, @Richard Booth I worried I would do a disservice to the tape recording of the brief exchange with Blakey. Heard live, I trust you would draw a different conclusion. Blakey knew exactly who the caller asked about. I coauthored "Coup in Dallas" with Hank Albarelli having been contacted by him as his collaboration with Major Ralph Ganis dissolved. So, if i can ask, what "thesis" can you not "buy into" having "flipped through it"? It's not a flippin through kind of book. It's definitely not a Raymond Chandler whodunit. And, btw, how did you miss the title page?

@Richard Booth I may have overlooked it. Does Carmine Savastrano reference the HSCA handling of the Souetre question? The Shaw / Fensterwald files were handed over in good faith to the committee. Several years later, Robert Blakey was asked about Jean Souetre during a q&a following his interview on a popular radio talk show. I’ve heard the recording. Paraphrasing for now until I have permission to share the precise transcript: Before the caller could complete his question, Blakey stepped over the name Souetre with, “Yes. Yes. I’m familiar with the name.” When pressed further, Blakey said the committee investigators looked into “him,” and while it was interesting info, they concluded he wasn’t involved. There was nothing there. When pressed further, Blakey then said they “ran out of time.” Bud and Gary, who pursued the FOIA requests for Soutre & related through to the Appeals Court, handed a large portion of their files over to the committee at the outset of the HSCA investigation so Blakey et al had a full year to pursue the suspect shooters. It has been argued their mandate didn’t include crime solving. The files currently languish in an unknown DC location. Perhaps @Greg Doudna might look into this?

@Richard Booth Col. Jack Canon evaded scrutiny even after Dick Russell revealed that Richard Case Nagell identified Canon as having played a role in Dealey. Subsequently we also learned from Dick in his 1992 break-out book, The Man Who Knew Too Much, that Canon had run Gen. Charles Willoughby’s deadly Z unit. Had researchers maintained the open mind essential to competent investigative work, how much further along would we be. This is personal for me because it was Dick’s book — recommended to me by a close friend during a rare phone call from NYC to Dublin Ireland where I was living in 1993 — that launched my pursuit of who killed Kennedy. It had haunted me since age 16 for reasons beyond the collective trauma but I never anticipated it would consume the last 1/3 of my life on planet earth. This friend and I met and bonded in Dallas in 1981 while we helped launch the flagship property of Rosewood Hotels, founded by a daughter of the late oilman H. L. Hunt. He was stunned to read about Willoughby’s ties to Hunt and suspected I would be as well. The rest is, as the saying goes, history and here I am, thirty years later almost to the month, discussing the book, Dick Russell, Canon, Soutre, et al with a stranger and presumably genuine fact & truth seeker, Richard Booth.

@Richard Booth The breadcrumbs led to “The KGB JFK Assassination Files” directed and produced by David McKenzie a.k.a. Stanton along with Brad O’Leary, narrated by Roger Moore on location in Moscow. Five years later O’Leary published “Triangle of Death: The Shocking Truth about the Role of South Vietnam and the French Mafia in the Assassination of JFK.” I plan to introduce a thread on EF devoted to this inquiry soon. For now, the identities of French nationals expelled from Dallas are at the center of the decades-long confusion. We argue the confusion was deliberate, and every ten-twenty years another layer is piled on. This research is also germane to another active EF thread deliberating why certain files remain withheld in contravention of the spirit — if not the letter of the law as most here argue —- of the JFK Records Act.

As I noted recently, the clever repartee on Kennedy-related threads on this forum has grown stale imho. Why don't the guilty parties sit quietly in the corner of this thread rather than tossing wrenches into current deliberations? Or have they purchased a seat at the adults' table? I've seen no indication of them having earned it. @Jonathan Cohen @Benjamin Cole

@Pat Speer I respectfully disagree. The community failed to coalesce to methodically pursue the shooters from the outset, ignoring best investigative practices. Competition -- that green-eyed monster -- took hold and remains alive and well. An example of that failure and interference was the HSCA's luke warm pursuit of the French nationals deported from Dallas. The record will soon be set straight by unraveling in the specifics how decades later respected researchers fell victim to the orchestrated operation meant to conceal their role. Sometimes the way forward is backward.

@Roger Odisio I think we're on parallel paths then. I must have misunderstood.. identifying the shooters is essential to identification of who hired them, and from there . . . I believe someone at the Duquesne conference said 11 shots fired?

@Greg Doudna Which is it Greg? You removed yourself from the equation, and/but you're speaking for yourself? Please be clear. Please be transparent. Win Scott's Cold War diaries are germane to the assassination of Kennedy. It seems those with access to them are gatekeeping that dark history. Lafitte was directly involved in the assassination. June Cobb-- another subject that drew Hank's attention --was not. When you spell out your specific interest in her, and acknowledge that having read the recent book by Mary Haversrick and Hank's A Secret Order, you realize there are inexplicable contradictions, facts that do not align, let us know. No, I did not say I am the gatekeeper. Thats your ill-informed accusation. I said that if your band of historians want to discuss this, they're invited to contact me personally. I also said that third party interference can result in injunctions. No one wants that, right, Greg? Arcade Press? And aren't you clever! You outed me a decade after I outed myself to those that matter. When you establish a non-profit ( funded by, say, Curme?) toward that admirable end, with bylaws to ensure that private archives are not being vacuumed up by dishonorable investors, authors and researchers, get back to me. It's doubtful you are aware that a legitimate effort is underway.

@Jean Ceulemans I think he was step-son. Let me confirm. I know Hank communicated with him personally.

@Roger Odisio I appreciate your position, but our mission statement all along -- solve a cold case murder investigation -- has been soup to nuts: identify the shooters, who developed the strategy for them, who paid them to shoot, who got them out of Dallas, who managed the lay of the land, why was Dallas the perfect scene of the crime, etc. I think you see where this is going, up the food chain rather than top down. As I think you and I have discussed, if "we" have it right, the investigations will eventually converge. I too have my concerns about the podcast, particularly their purported assertion they have positioned the shooters. We're not there yet. I was equally concerned in the early days that the PM crowd stated openly that they didn't give a damn who DID kill Kennedy, they just wanted to exonerate Oswald. Your comment hints that might still be the prevailing attitude?

@Benjamin Cole it’s my understanding the Reiner - O’Brien podcast, “Who Killed JFK,” in the most literal sense, is intended to appeal to a wide audience and will risk naming shooters. Those you identify as perhaps better qualified to advise the project have not — to my knowledge — taken that risk.

@Steve Thomas I’m curious. Then what book or books or material prompted your interest in Jean Souetre years later?

@Greg Doudna You breached the guardrails by attacking me professionally and personally, and by insinuating Hank was either a fool or a fraud. I’m moderating the leaf from Hank’s book ... he would tell you to “just go away.” If you’re not interested in further details about June Cobb’s life story for your own edification, on whose behalf are you lobbying, and why the urgency? Surely you and/or they aren’t inspired by the pure speculation that permeates this recent book, speculation acknowledged by the author herself btw. Several names come to mind who might have asked you to perform as proxy. Perhaps some among those you visited with at Lancer even. Or Dr. Newman himself? In the event, you should be aware that Hank’s family was around during that dispute. I’ll leave it at that. Let’s clear this up once and for all. The time expended with you on the issue of June — who was NOT in Dealey nor was she an active participant in the Lancelot Project — is better spent. Where was your interest in Hank’s pursuit of someone he suspected intuitively WAS a participant, Pierre Lafitte — with ot without the datebook and ledger sheets — a character known to have been a “special employee” of numerous three letter agencies including Hunter White’s FBN working with Gottlieb, a personal friend of Angleton as were their wives, and Charlie Siragusa, the agency’s liaison to the mob. That’s where you and “historians” should be looking, not chasing some wild speculative sci-fi that three women were actually all one and the same. Please respond in the specifics; otherwise this discussion is concluded. And tell your “historians” they are invited to contact me directly. Many have my email and or phone.

@Greg Doudna You have no idea what efforts are underway, so pardon my French, but stay the fxck out of this for the time being. Ask Bob Woodward for his source material. See how that goes. Better still, ask Jeff Morley about Win Scott's Cold War diaries. See if he'll arrange for your personal access based on your illustrious Dead Sea Scroll experience. Inflated sense of self-importance is the hallmark of a weak ego. Don't use Hank Albarelli as a whipping post to create the illusion you're a more qualified investigator. I read your stuff on Walker.... full of holes. Where is du Berrier, or Johnson? Why leave out his fascist connections or his role as attache to Angleton in Rome? Or Wicliffe Venard or the American Mercury and Willis Carto? Instead you chase his publicist? Again, full of holes as is your stuff on H. L. Hunt. Anyone knowledgable would investigate Morrow or Diggs, and Gen. Willoughby named in the Lafitte datebook as active in the Lancelot Project - or Paul Rothermel named in the Lafitte ledgers. (Or the more contemporary throughline from Bunker to Iran Contra.) But you chase Hunt's aging attorney.... for no other reason than he fell into your lap, in East Texas as I recall, tellin' you tales most of us in the know recognized as a complete whitewash and an embarrassing puff piece, not investigative reporting. This is information warfare Mr. Doudna, and I finally realize what faction you're serving. You can take the boy outta East Texas, but . . . More on your failure to recognize the contradictions in the Jerrie Cobb The Pilot, June Cobb The CIA Employee, and Catherine Taaffe The Arms Dealer on the appropriate thread. Where is you disernment??

@Greg Doudna A pitiful wolf was worried and badly bitten by dogs, and lay a long time for dead. By and by he began to revive, and, feeling very hungry, called out to a passing ewe, “Would you kindly bring me some water from the stream close by? I can manage about meat, if only I could get something to drink.” This ewe was no fool. “I can quite understand that if I brought you the water,” mused the ewe, “you would have no difficulty about the meat. Adieu.” — adapted from a fable by Aesop

@Bob Ness fairly sure the same applies to the current iteration of INTERPOL. And, think about upsetting apple carts inside NATO in the midst of Putin’s war against Ukraine. The Joint Chiefs were meeting with the Bundeswehr of the Federal Republic of Germany in the Gold Room at the Pentagon on Friday the 22nd. Several of those generals were the top brass of NATO and at least two had a history with Gehlen org and INTERPOL which was founded by “former” Nazi officials. Are details of that history captured in the remaining files. Spain, then Ireland next.

@Matt Allison There's definitely something fundamentally skewed, but venturing to define it would likely get me tossed out on my ear. Meanwhile we indulge him in semi-clever repartee.

@Benjamin Cole when you can’t argue facts, attack the messenger?

@Benjamin Cole Trump has the institutional support of Heritage — the force behind Project 2025 — the NRA, ACU/CPAC, Alliance for Defense of Freedom and dozens of Christian Nationalist orgs under their wing, and it looks like ALEC is still hedging bets and backing Trump. alecexposed.org and of course there is America First Works and America First Policy Institute, the brainchildren of Proto-Fascist Steve Miller. and don’t forget co-defendant in the Georgia Rico trial John Eastman’s very own Claremont Institute and sister-in-ideology Hillsdale College. And for a complete see list of Right-wing think tanks that drove Trump policy, see https://projects.prepublication.org So, promoting Trump as some up-from-his-boot-straps populist reveals a mental block of some degree. Is that why the term “cult” is so appropriate.

@Benjamin Cole I’m fairly certain the two most qualified Constitutional scholars, Tribe and Luttig, wouldn’t be swayed by your discomfort. CREW will see this to the US Supreme Court, but whether Roberts agrees to hear it is yet to be determined. Considering the heat Thomas (and wife Ginni) and Alito have drawn, not to mention the investigation into Trump backer’s having paid Kavanaugh’s cc debt, would they dare?

@Greg Doudna again, apology and retraction are in order. If you choose not to, I’ll take the issue to the moderators. Meanwhile, you can stay abreast of facts in question by following my responses to members that approached the datebook and Albarelli’s investigation laid out in Coup in Dallas Coup with an open mind from the outset. I will state, for the public record, third party interference would prompt injunctions which could interrupt the progress being made.