28 minutes ago, Cliff Varnell said:

Someone Would Have Talked, Larry Hancock, pg 289.

<quote on>

On Friday night the White House placed telephone calls to Dallas DA Henry Wade, to Texas State Attorney General Carr and Police Chief Curry requesting that they avoid any official statements, charges, or discussion relating to conspiracy.  Johnson’s aide Cliff Carter was making the calls and if the individual in question raised objections, President Johnson was used as the authority for the message.  </q>

Johnson met with Harriman and then instructed his aide Carter to call Dallas and cut short talk of conspiracy.

I would need to dig through a defunct iPhone for the screenshot of the news account of Gannaway telling reporters Oswald had been in USSR and married a Russian, but I'm virtually certain he did so on Friday afternoon. He must not have received the memo. 😞 

additional background on Gannaway:

According to a reflective exposé in “D” Magazine by reporter Jim Atkinson in 1977, “For Dallas, the Apalachin affair [the November 14, 1957, mass arrest of some 100 of the highest-ranking bosses in the infamous Italian network, La Cosa Nostra] was its own kind of shock. After all, here was a young, vigorous city that prided itself on its safe streets and clean City Hall. But there was certainly no denying that one of its residents had turned up at the largest gathering of the Mafia in history . . . [respected] Dallas businessman Joe Civello’s presence at Apalachin in 1957 would turn out to be less significant than the absence of another key underworld figure: New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello. Marcello, one of the most powerful and sophisticated mob bosses in the nation, had wisely stayed away from Apalachin; strapped with a 1953 deportation order and other legal troubles, the forty-seven-year-old Sicilian feared such a foray from his Louisiana fortress would overexpose him to federal authorities. 

         In the aftermath of Apalachin, it would become at least probable that Civello had attended as Marcello’s surrogate. This suggested that the 55-year-old imported foods grocer was not only a member of the mob, but a member of some rank. And it suggested one more possibility, one which Dallas law enforcement officers had only guessed at before: that Dallas was an operating outpost for the varied illicit interests of the Marcello mob.”

         In spite of that spectacular arrest in November ’57, and the ensuing national press coverage and indictments, on October 8, 1963, a Dallas Morning News headline read: “Officer Says Syndicated Crime is Doubtful in Dallas.” Reporter John Geddie had recently interviewed head of the Special Operations Division of the Dallas Police Department: “Captain W. P. “Pat.” Gannaway gave three reasons Monday for Dallas being a prime plum but forbidden fruit for Cosa Nostra-type syndicated crime. 

         Captain Gannaway, head of the Dallas Police Department’s vice, narcotics, and intelligence bureaus “credited the police force, the district attorney’s office, and good juries for keeping big time crime out of the city.” Gannaway insisted, “ . . . the manner of survival proves it [the syndicate] is not well organized in Dallas . . . Walk down the street and try to place a bet . . . Most won’t know where . . . there is no main heroin contact . . . and you don’t see prostitutes walking down the streets of Dallas.” Geddie concluded the report with a quote from the captain, “There may be members of organized crime in Dallas practicing their trade elsewhere, but not in Dallas.”

         Captain Gannaway’s observation was especially ironic considering how closely aligned his protestations were with the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, J. Edgard Hoover vs. the task force on organized crime headed by US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. RFK had already widened his investigation into Dallas mob connections by calling for federal grand jury hearings a month before Geddie’s interview with Gannaway. According to investigative journalist Mark North, author of Act of Treason: The Role of J. Edgar Hoover in the Assassination of President Kennedy, who uncovered a deeply buried case against a Dallas bookmaker by the name of John Eli Stone, “Robert Kennedy, knowing he could not get indictments in Dallas because of the pro-Mob mind-set, had chosen the smaller conservative city [Wichita Falls, Texas].” 

         North observed that, “ . . . reporters were there when Philip Bosco [a Joe Civello bookmaker] was called into the Grand Jury room. From Bosco, RFK had the opportunity to gain a detailed understanding of the Pearl Street Mafia. But true to omertà, Bosco took the Fifth against self-incrimination. He was brought before Judge Sarah [sic] Hughes, who ‘exempted him from criminal prosecution . . .’” According to North, after Bosco again refused to answer, and again took the Fifth, a reluctant Judge Hughes scheduled a contempt of court hearing to, in North’s words, “placate RFK’s prosecutors.” North’s investigation into the deeply buried facts surrounding the 1963 case, revealed that the prosecutor was meaning to also prosecute the Civello mob. (Note: Mark North chose to refer to the Civello crime family in Dallas as Pearl Street Mafia because it originated in the Pearl Street Market district.)

1 hour ago, Cliff Varnell said:

Didn’t the Dallas PD suspect Oswald’s involvement well before the FBI?

I believe Captain Pat Gannaway was the first to publicly disclose Oswald was married to a native of Russia ergo he had been in the USSR.

Prof. P.D. Scott argues that it was Mamantov’s mistranslation of Marina’s Russian that was later used to bolster what Scott calls “Phase-One” . . . the story that Russia and/or Cuba were behind the assassination. On the heels of Ilya’s misinterpretation, Chief of the Intelligence Section of the Dallas Police Department, Don Stringfellow, and according to Scott a member of Crichton’s 488th, notified the 112th Army Intelligence Group which in turn cabled the US Strike Common at Fort MacDill Friday for a possible retaliatory attack against Cuba. It was Stringfellow who accompanied Captain Pat Gannaway of the Special Services Bureau to 411 Elm allegedly to conduct a roll call which culminated in identifying Lee Harvey Oswald as having left the building when all others remained. The roll call appears to have been bogus, yet Gannaway without hesitation advised the media that Lee Harvey Oswald, presumably absent from an employee roll call, had been in the Soviet Union and brought his young Russian wife with him back to America. Statements made by Gannaway in the early hours following the assassination fed the fear that a third World War was conceivable because a “commie” killed Kennedy. 

31 minutes ago, Steve Thomas said:

- Donald Trump -

 

“We will immediately stop all of the pillaging and theft. Very simply: If you rob a store, you can fully expect to be shot as you are leaving that store”, he said, drawing loud applause. “Shot” he added for emphasis.

 

Forget about arrests and trials and all that silly stuff.

You know, Donald Trump sure seems to talk about killing people a lot.

Steve Thomas

will that policy apply to bank fraud?

Who Had the Power to Cover It Up? 

Thus asked the composite character, “X,” played by actor Donald Sutherland in Oliver Stone’s depiction of DA Jim Garrison’s investigation into the assassination, JFK (the movie). 

Much deliberation ensued between the authors of this book following the analysis of the “holdout” entries [appearing in a 1963 datebook maintained by intel contractor Pierre Lafitte]. A pertinent question surfaced as the pursuit of "holdout" grew more aggressive: “who within the domestic intelligence agencies would have the most influence over the investigation on the ground in Dallas?” Would Hoover have been a "holdout" in the final phase of the operation—someone who delayed signing a contract in hopes of gaining more favorable terms—not that it wasn’t widely known that Hoover wanted to see the Kennedys taken down but that any criminal operation on US soil was his turf, meaning that the buck would stop at his desk. Was he hedging all bets? Was he asking for something in return? He also knew that any successful conspiracy operation would require cooperation of elements under his control to assure that everything went smoothly and that the assassination would remain unsolved or unprosecuted, or, a patsy would carry the blame. Even the most skilled tactician, for instance SS Otto Skorzeny, would not be able to orchestrate a successful operation of this magnitude without the involvement of pivotal domestic forces (FBI) including those on the ground in New Orleans and Dallas; nor could the CIA’s James Angleton, at least not in the most practical of terms. Despite all the power Angleton could excerpt, he still could not intervene in an on-the-ground investigation on American soil and Dulles could only do so from a distance, under very specific protocol. The US military would have influence from behind the scenes, but they too would [be compelled to] liaise with Hoover’s FBI.

Those au fait with the culture will know that the Dallas contingency, responsible for the investigation in the aftermath of November 22, would preferably take their cue from “one of their own,” someone who had for more than a decade enjoyed the largesse of Texas powerbrokers with the financial bravado to buck the East Coast elites, including Allen Dulles and James Angleton at the CIA. Director Hoover, with his close personal friendships with Texas oilmen, and Clint Murchison in particular, could tilt the balance. Murchison, who is alleged to have ended up with one of the three copies of the Zapruder film produced by Jamieson Labs, was a long-standing client of Bobby Baker who had traveled to New Orleans earlier in the year in the company of the lovely Carol Tyler, and Kennedy’s recent object of desire, East German Ellen Rometsch. Murchison had over the years paid for Hoover’s annual retreats to the Hotel del Charro near La Jolla, California. According to Hoover’s appointment calendar, August of 1963 was no exception. Known to host some of Dallas’ finest card games in a condo located at 3535 Turtle Creek Blvd., an invitation to Murchison’s del Charro games was equally coveted. Had Hoover, long alleged to have been a heavy gambler, been known as "Holdout," and was the term refined by Lafitte to fit the context of Project Lancelot?

and this additional excerpt regarding the cover-up using Oswald as the designated patsy — from Albarelli's last investigation: 
 

EPILOGUE

Levine will deal w/ Marina e.t. 

[illegible writing] / ck

 JA

(coded [illegible])

call Madrid

  —Lafitte datebook, November 28, 1963

Levine   A  z-4   z

  —Lafitte datebook, November 30, 1963

This fellow Levine is in contact with Marina to break the story up in a little more graphic manner and tie it into a Russian business, and it is with the thought and background of a Russian connection, conspiracy concept. 

—John J. McCloy, Warren Commission Jan 21, 1964 

After much deliberation over the significance of Isaac Don Levine having closed out the assassination project manager’s 1963 datebook, Albarelli determined that, logically, Levine would also close out the investigation. Levine’s anti-communist dogma which would permeate his life’s work took shape prior to America’s entry into WWII, and thus serves as the symbolic bookend to the foundational chapters of this book. His writings, and in particular his networking—from the sensational Alger Hiss spy case, to the associations he developed during the reign of Senator Joseph McCarthy, and the services he provided the CIA—gave us a keener grasp of why Levine was selected by Warren Commission members Allen Dulles and John McCloy to influence the propaganda surrounding Lee Oswald as a “Commie Lone Nut.” It is the political history of Levine and that of a young Manhattan attorney named Roy Marcus Cohn—Joe McCarthy’s lead counsel who serves as our foothold on contemporary US politics—that captures the decades-long repercussions of the assassination of President Kennedy and the Coup in Dallas. But first . . .

***

Ten years after the 1952 launch of the Skorzeny-Meadows oil scheme in Spain, which has served as a significant backdrop to this investigation, geologist Declan Ford, who spent most of that decade in Madrid consulting on the project on behalf of Dallas-based DeGolyer & MacNaughton, was living in Dallas when he and his new wife were introduced to the Oswald couple recently returned from the Soviet Union. Katherine Declan, who also emigrated from Russia, had become an active member of the White Russian community in Dallas. 

         In the aftermath of Jack Ruby’s murder of Lee Oswald, Katherine and Declan invited the young widow Marina Oswald to spend time in their home in the north Dallas suburb of Richardson. While at the Fords’, Marina remained under US government surveillance as reflected in reports for February 1964 that identified Isaac Don Levine of Baltimore, Maryland as having been seen coming and going from the Ford address. 

         Numerous stories have circulated about how the conservative author, well-known in particular among right wing extreme anti-communist circles, was introduced to Marina with the intention of becoming the chronicler of choice to write her story. A persuasive argument is made that following the assassination, Declan’s brother, Joseph Ford, a professor in California, had bumped into Levine at the home of a mutual colleague and mentioned to him that Declan was living in Dallas and might arrange an introduction to Marina. Another version stemming from the testimony of Marina’s first “agent” who was the manager of the Six Flags Over Texas Motel where she was held virtual captive for several days, asserts that Meredith Press of Des Moines, Iowa, thought that because Levine was considered an expert on the USSR, having been born in Belarus, he would be most suited to the task of recording her story. (The reader is reminded that another well-regarded reporter of that era, Clark Mollenhof, was the first to break the story that President Kennedy had sexual relations with Ellen Rometsch, the woman suspected by many in Washington as an East German spy. Mollenhoff reported for the Des Moines Register.)

Established here for the first time is Levine’s official assignment in the cover-up ofProject Lancelot—the logistical plan to assassinate the president of the United States— rendering the various versions of his access to Marina Oswald irrelevant, except to implicate Declan Ford, whose professional history was tied directly to a Madrid scheme of the man who would eventually serve as chief tactician of the plot to kill Kennedy, Otto Skorzeny.

Lafitte writes on November 28, long before Levine was formally introduced to Marina Oswald, that Levine would “deal with Marina.” He also indicates that he [Lafitte] is going to check with James Angleton, custodian of intelligence files on Lee Oswald. There is also the suggestion that Lafitte means to revert to encryption:

JA

(coded cryp)

call Madrid

Two days later, Lafitte does just that, and pens what appears to be code, “Levine A  z-4 z”.

On December 1, Lafitte made another related note, “cable to NY & Madrid.” For the record, in 1963 former DCI Allen Dulles, who would promote Levine as the ideal chronicler of the communist conspiracy angle to the assassination, leased an office at 630 Fifth Avenue, the forty-story International Building in Rockefeller Plaza shared with British Intelligence as well as a small petroleum consortium that included East Texas oilman Joe Zeppa, an original member of the Skorzeny-Meadows scheme in Madrid.

And on this issue of conspiracy theories, this perspective from thelastrefuge@reagan.com is choc full of "deep state" conspiracy with none other than Bobby at the center.

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2023/09/29/robert-kennedy-jr-to-run-as-independent-in-2024-election/#more-251376

“Let’s say a real white nationalist arose who had real political power," said former shampoo magnate and would-be "warlord" Charles Haywood, "and therefore [could] be of assistance against the left. I think that the answer is that you should cooperate with that person in order to destroy the power of the left.”
https://www.rawstory.com/christopher-rufo-desantis/

17 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

I wonder, Leslie.

The danger of RFK, Jr.'s third party candidacy is that he could tip the Electoral balance to Trump's fascist cult in 2024-- in the same way that George W. Bush was tragically "elected" in 2000 by Ralph Nader's third party candidacy.

(Incidentally, Ralph Nader just endorsed Biden this week, acknowledging that we need to keep Trump out of office in our American "duopoly.")

I was struck by Conason's astute observation that this Kennedy (who I posit is more Skakel than K) and Trump share fundamental traits: the candidate you [Bobby] resemble most in political ideology, personal conduct, and narcissistic mentality [is Trump].

Jack and Bobby may have been mavericks within the Democratic Party (and yes, they each suffered their own narcissistic demons) but they knew how to read the room and work it. Bobby has botched his chance, imv. He now joins the fringe. The tipping point for me was that push-ups vid, evoking images of MTG with her assault rifle. Oorah!.  

Bannon, Hannity, Carlson, Hoft, et al are salivating at the prospect of his candidacy as an independent chipping away at Biden's numbers within the party, but I can't imagine tens of thousands of Republicans voting for A Kennedy nor do I think that's what the alt-right influencers are proposing.  They're in pursuit of chaos at all costs. Burn it all down. Kennedy's the match.
 

Just now, Leslie Sharp said:

 

Bill O’Reilly Tells Tucker CIA Operative George de Mohrenschildt Befriended Lee Harvey Oswald Before JFK’s Assassination and Was Later Found With “Brains Blown Out”

55 minutes ago, Steve Thomas said:

What's scarier than Donald Trump?

Donald Trump with a gun.

 

Trump just bought a Glock gun: report

Sarah K. Burris

September 25, 2023 3:22PM ET

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-2665730741/

Steve Thomas

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4222060-trump-spokesperson-reverses-says-ex-president-didnt-buy-a-glock/

@Michael Griffith It can be argued that there's justification for substituting the honey-pot operation involving East German femme fatale Ellen Rometsch in lieu of the alleged murder of Hollywood actress Marilyn Monroe as rationale for the assassination of JFK as Albarelli lays out in his investigation.  We argue that the Kennedy-Rometsch scandal with attendant international intrigue as opposed to domestic concerns over Kennedy's alleged moral turpitude is ignored at the expense of an accurate record of dynamics contributing to the decision to assassination JFK in Dallas.
 

Author Seymour Hersh, an equally respected investigative writer and newsman, broke ground in 1997 when he ventured into the implications of President Kennedy’s history with Ellen Rometsch in what has been to date perhaps the most controversial exposé among JFK afficionados, not because his reporting was inaccurate—it wasn’t, and indeed it was quite factual—but because it shattered many of the mythical features of Kennedy’s supposed finer qualities. Hersh, renowned for a slew of CIA exposés, delivered a devastating account of Rometsch’s Washington activities in his book, The Dark Side of Camelot. 

Some reaction to Hersh’s deep and thorough digging into the Rometsch case has been fiercely oppositional, yet nobody has been able to prove that his evidence and accounts are wrong or fabricated in any way. Oddly, it is not his evidence that is called into question, but instead the fact that he had the audacity to publish it that is faulted. It is important for the authors of this book to repeat here that they take no pleasure or delight in writing about JFK’s sexual exploits. We believe strongly that despite JFK’s private life, he remains one of this nation’s finest presidents.

Hersh on Mollenhoff

Sy Hersh notes that Clark Mollenhoff’s reporting included reference to Delaware Senator Williams’ access to an account of Rometsch’s life in D.C. over a period of more than two years, and that having been born in East Germany, she still had relatives on “the other side of the iron curtain.” Mollenhoff had added, either parenthetically or based on information provided him by his sources within the government, “The possibility that her activity might be connected with espionage is of some concern for security investigators because of the high rank of her male companions.” Thus, Mollenhoff revealed to the public that in July, the FBI had started investigating the possibility that Ellen was a Soviet spy, and that “with less than a week’s notice, she and her husband were sent back to Germany . . . at the request of the State Department.” 

Hersh observes that Mollenhoff, who had covered labor corruption during the 1950s, had been an enthusiastic supporter of Bobby Kennedy’s work as general counsel of the Senate Rackets Committee. Writes Hersh, “The two men had grown apart—the specifics of their dispute could not be learned for this book—and the increasingly conservative[emphasis added] Mollenhoff begun to write extensively, and critically, of the Kennedy administration’s decision in late 1962 to bypass Boeing and award the TFX contract to General Dynamics. Writes Hersh, Mollenhoff’s reporting “was taken most seriously by Bobby Kennedy.”

Indeed, reporter Mollenhoff’s conservative leaning was apparent in public settings when in October of 1962 when he participated on a panel, “Washington Cover-Up” at Georgetown University alongside the president of the Ukraine Congress Committee of America (UCCA) and Georgetown economics professor Lev Dobriansky, evidenced in a photo in The Ukraine Weekly, and in ensuing years, Mollenhoff was not shy about his commitment to anti-communism. A brief mention in an article dated Saturday, April 20, 1974 in The Ukraine Weekly, under the headline, “Anti-communist League Holds 7th Conference In Washington,” provides a window into his public support of the World Anti-communist League (WACL). 

Hosted in D.C. by the American Council for World Freedom (ACWF), the conference boasted some twenty-five speakers, representing both free nations and countries under Communist suppression, including autocrat General Anastazio Somoza of Nicaragua and the Hon. Yaroslav Stetzko, former Prime Minister of Ukraine and head of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN) since its inception as well as leader of the Organization of Ukranian Nationalists (OUN). The US affiliate of the Stetzko’s ABN, The American Friends of Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations is infamous among Kennedy researchers for its leading member, Spas Raikin who traveled from Ohio to Hoboken, NJ to meet Lee Harvey Oswald and his Russian wife Marina as they arrived from the USSR. 

LADDER CAPITAL and Donald Trump

Trump's second largest creditor in 2017 Ladder Capital was founded by Brian Harris whose professional bio is reflective of the deepest of the Deep State or more effectively defined, the financial arm of the Military-Industrial Complex.

' . . . As an REIT, Ladder Capital is less transparent than, say, a publicly-traded bank like JPMorgan Chase or Bank of America. We do, however, know that late last year Ladder Capital reportedly looked into the possibility of selling itself to another institution, blaming onerous federal regulations on the business of repackaging and selling loans. That raises important questions about what happens when one of Ladder’s biggest debtors is also the nation’s chief executive who oversees—and might push to change—those very regulations. — Andy Kroll, Mother Jones

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/06/trump-ladder-capital-loan/

Ladder Capital website:
"Prior to forming Ladder, Mr. Harris served as a Senior Partner and Head of Global Commercial Real Estate at Dillon Read Capital Management, a wholly owned subsidiary of UBS, and previously as Head of Global Commercial Real Estate at UBS and a Member of the Board of UBS Investment Bank, as well as Head of Commercial Mortgage Trading at Credit Suisse. Mr. Harris received a B.S. and an M.B.A. from The State University of New York at Albany."

https://www.laddercapital.com/personnel/brian-harris/


Dillon Read:
W. Averell Harriman also formed a partnership with the German industrialist, Fritz Thyssen. In 1926 Harriman and Clarence Dillon of Dillon Read Company helped Thyssen and Friedrich Flick to establish the German Steel Trust. According to Anton Chaitkin: "The Flick-Harriman partnership was directly supervised by Prescott Bush". Dillon Read provided two representatives to the board of the German Steel Trust and took responsibility for its corporate banking.

In 1928 Thyssen formed United Steelworks, a company that controlled more that 75 per cent of Germany's ore reserves and employed 200,000 people. Thyssen started a joint-venture with Harriman called the Union Banking Corporation. This was used to transfer funds between the United States and Germany. In 1931 W.A. Harriman & Company merged with the British-American banking house Brown Brothers. Prescott Bush, along with W. Averell Harriman, E. Roland Harriman and George Herbert Walker, became managing partners in the new company, Brown Brothers Harriman. This was to develop into the most important private banking house in America. — Spartacus Educational.

https://spartacus-educational.com/MDbushPR.htm

Secret Bankers For The Nazis
Michael Hirsch. Newsweek. 6/23/96
'. . . The documents, which include U.S. intelligence reports compiled in the 1940s in an attempt to track German loot, go further than ever in detailing the extent of Swiss involvement with the Nazi regime. The papers also show how the Nazi horror was financed with billions in blood money stolen from its own victims. They weren't only the Jews, but occupied governments and other citizens stripped of gold, jewelry and other property. Many of the documents embarrass Swiss banks that since the war have become world-class institutions renowned for their integrity. One 1944 U.S. intelligence report, for example, accuses Union Bank of Switzerland and Credit Suisse of routinely laundering Nazi money during two months of that year. (Both banks declined to comment on the document. But a Credit Suisse spokesman said that during the war, the bank "had a businesslike relationship with the Germans," operating within the guidelines of the Swiss Bankers Association.) Other banks are cited for falsifying stock certificates so they could fence securities the Germans had looted from France.'

https://www.newsweek.com/secret-bankers-nazis-178724

Nick Popich
Excerpt from Jonathan Marshall's Dark Quadrant (courtesy William Kelly):

    The [Senate Rules] committee was unaware of what the FBI knew about [Bobby] Baker’s New Orleans associates. In February 1963, under intense pressure from the Attorney General, Hoover directed his field office there to aggressively develop new informants and initiate electronic surveillance of suspected underworld members. Had Hoover been authorized to share information, the Rules Committee would have learned that Louisiana mob boss Carlos Marcello was reputedly a hidden partner in Popich’s Vieux Carré restaurant on Bourbon St. in New Orleans. (Testifying before Congress in executive session years later, Marcello confirmed that he and Popich had been close friends since childhood, and did business together.) It would have learned that Popich was involved with a 1961 shipment of 2,000 machine guns and a number of M-1 rifles to a “big wheel” allied with a group of disaffected Honduran military officers. It would have learned that Popich received at least two calls in 1964 from Charles “the Blade” Tourine, a senior Lansky associate and former Havana casino operator living in Miami Beach.

   The FBI may not have known at the time an even more explosive bit of information about Nick Popich: he owned land near Lake Pontchartrain on which militant anti-Castro exiles were training in 1963 to undertake illegal raids into Cuba. Their activities violated the Neutrality Act and the Kennedy administration’s firm policy of preventing such raids from U.S. soil in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Without naming Baker’s New Orleans contact, the guerrilla training camp became the subject of testimony before the Warren Commission in 1964, while the Rules Committee was still investigating Baker. The Commission learned that President Kennedy’s presumed assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, had attempted to infiltrate the camp in the summer of 1963 while living in New Orleans. The camp disbanded that August only after the FBI raided a nearby arms cache maintained by anti-Castro activists, seizing more than a ton of dynamite, 20 bomb casings, fuses, and fixings for napalm. The militants acquired these explosives for a planned bombing raid against oil refineries near Havana. Their stockpile was allegedly financed by dispossessed Havana casino owner and his partner, who was described years later in Senate testimony as “a dealer in counterfeit money . . . [who] has been involved in dealing with stolen securities and other securities closely associated with . . . gamblers in Miami.” Authors Warren Hinckle and William Turner observed, “the Lake Pontchartrain raid was evidence that circles existed within circles. The most violent and rabidly rightist of exile elements, feeling that JFK had betrayed them, were turning to the mob and the radical paramilitary right wing for help in a war that was to turn against the government itself.” To say the least, members of the Rules Committee apprised of such facts would have been duty bound to dig further into the background of Baker’s associates.

https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/2018/docid-32267342.pdf

Excerpt HSCA Record Number 180-10118-10067, Record Series Briefing Books, 01/11/1978

. . . 3. Nature and Relationship with Organized Crime  Individuals Who Had Substantial Investments in Cuba

          a. Meyer Lansky

          b. Lewis McWillie

          c. Mike and William McLaney

          d. Norman Rothman

          e. Santo Trafficante 

               - La Stella meeting

               - Doctor in New Orleans

          f. Frank Sturgis

          g. Charles Tourin . . . 

 

C. Marcello's knowledge of or participation in Anti-Castro groups based in New Orleans.                                                                                                    

     1.  Training Camps at Lake Ponchartrain

          a.  7 Crowns Ranch (owned by Nick Popich in 1963, subsequently by Sam Marcello)

          b. Supplying arms

               —Munitions raid on Bill McClaney's property - Sam Benton arrested
          c. Supplying funds

               —G. Wray Gill allegedly transferred funds to Cuban groups.

     2. Association with groups based in New Orleans

          a. Cuban Revolutionary Democratic Fund (FRD)

               1) Arcacha Smith - (head of FRD, associate of David Ferrie

               2) William Dalzell

               3) Proposed trade: Cuban citizenship and gambling concession for $200,000

          b. Cuban Revolutionary Council (CRC)

               1) Manuel Gil (head - arranged Oswald - Carlos Bringer debate

          c. Information Council of the Americas (INCA)

               1) Ed Butler (head, participated in Oswald-Bringuier debate) [Note: Butler and Bill Dalzell joined forces briefly in Free Voice of Latin America]

               2) Seymour Weiss (charter member, Director of Standard Fruit

               3) William I. Monaghan (Oswald associate, Standard Fruit)



The names McWillie, Trafficante, Ruby, Oswald, Dalzell appear in the 1963 datebook maintained by Pierre Lafitte:    


 

15 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

Fact check

The only connection of your lengthy post filled with free-association of names to the topic--the James Odell Estes story--is a connection you claim to New Orleans restauranteur and Marcello associate Nick Popich, who has been conjectured as one possibility for the identity of Estes' "Nick" figure. 

You write: "As revealed in a 1964 article detailing Bobby Baker's role in the F-111 scandal, in May 1963, Nick Popich played host to his business associate, Puerto Rican Paul Aguirre along with Baker, his girlfriend Nancy Carole Tyler, and Ellen Rometsch.**"

This Nick Popich claim is not found in Coup in Dallas--in fact Popich does not appear in the Coup in Dallas index at all--so this Nick Popich detail is something newly originated or presented by you here on my thread, which you then utilized as the launch pad to seque to some Lafitte datebook names and entries. 

I assume you did your own research here since it appears under your name not credited to anyone else?

Could you identify your reference for your statement concerning Nick Popich: "As revealed in a 1964 article ... Nick Popich played host to ... Aguirre along with [Bobby] Baker, his girlfriend Nancy Carole Tyler, and Ellen Rometsch"?

What 1964 article reveals that?

Your two stars go to a footnote citing a 1964 book,The Bobby Baker Affair, by G.R. Schreiber. 

There is no reference to Nick Popich in that book. I know, because I checked today. Wasted 90 minutes of my precious time trying to find your claimed reference in that book (the book has no index), and it isn't there. The name Nick Popich isn't in the book. 

Were you referring to a different 1964 article? If so, could you give the citation, and the quote from it? Or did a source supply you with an erroneous claim, or was it originated by yourself? 

I ask that responses to this be kept brief and to the point, if possible, rather than go further afield into non-James Odell Estes-related matters. 

Greg, 

I have been researching the Kennedy assassination in Dallas since 1993.

I am currently engaged on Ed Forum to advance the cold case investigation. Perhaps you might define how long you have been committed to studying the assassination and clarify your purpose here.

"Your" thread relates to the incident at the Carousel Club. Reference to a "Nick" appears in the episode and I have provided research to suggest that Nick Popich of New Orleans is a prime candidate.

Take it or leave it.

29 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Satan himself would get better treatment by legacy media than RFK2...and I have to believe it goes back to the JFK Records Act, and that RFK2 would renew the JFK initiatives regarding foreign policy. We are seeing CIA Op Mocks. 

I don't dare discuss C19 for fear of being excommunicated. 

There is this headline: 

CIA bribed its own COVID-19 origin team to reject lab-leak theory, anonymous whistleblower claims

Agency denies allegation as congressional panel demands information from CIA probe into pandemic’s start

12 SEP 2023

5:35 PM ET

BYJON COHEN

---30---

Why on earth did the US government ban discussions of the origins of C19, and why did the origins of C19 become perceived as a partisan issue? 

You can't make this stuff up. 

 

Leslie Sharp

8 minutes ago, Ron Bulman said:

Take me back in time.  Dr. Red Duke used to do regular Health Reports that appeared on one of the FW/D news casts and throughout Texas.  From Time Away, to Kidney Stones, to Burnout, to Cabbage, Chili and more.  A true Texas classic.

Bing Videos

Yes, a very colorful homo universalis.

1 hour ago, Nick Bartetzko said:

Mr Cohen....see link....

 

Thanks, Nick. 

It has been my experience that @Jonathan Cohen occasionally lobs declarative statements without doing his own research. In this instance, I assumed he was attacking my reference to the records maintained by Pierre Lafitte rather than the question of Dr. Duke's role at Parkland that day.

5 hours ago, Jonathan Cohen said:

There is no such person as "Dr. Duke."

You are misinformed.

4 hours ago, Vince Palamara said:

@Vince Palamara I shouldn't question the absolute go to guy on the SS, but doesn't the skeletal structure of the guy on the driver's side running board more closely resemble Landis today? 

Who is he?

On 9/12/2023 at 6:56 AM, Larry Hancock said:

I think I have to chime in here with what I think would be a critical point - that is the reality that within one to two hours of the attack on JFK there was no "pressure" at all on any law enforcement officer to "toe the line" media wise.  At that point it was a totally open criminal investigation and many officers were collecting possible evidence of all types and documenting it - many very poorly - but I see no evidence of any innocent explanation for something as obvious as a bullet fragment or bullet not to being reported to a senior agent or officer, shown to a fellow officer, marked in place or officially collected as evidence and taken into custody.

It is true that the Secret Service seems to have been very casual about handling evidence and you can explain that with poor training, bad supervision, or the chaos of the moment.   In other words if you want to give Landis a pass  you can treat him as incompetent  or derelict in his duties but mishandling evidence so dramatically that early would not be a sign of pressure, or fear of rocking the boat since there was no official story and no  LN artifice in place at that time. 

I would also encourage a through photo study  to see if Landis ever shows up in the Parkland photos in the vicinity of the car or if any of his movements were documented in the news photography that afternoon. 

Hear, Hear!

8 minutes ago, Vince Palamara said:

I would have to see the actual book- we shall see.

But you're certain that is Landis on the driver side running board, right?  (no sunglasses.) 

6 minutes ago, Vince Palamara said:

He was on the follow-up car the whole time***, although he went into the car after a short time at Love Field and then eventually went back out on the running board. 

 

***except for a couple unannounced short stops on the outskirts of Dallas where he and the other agents surrounded the presidential limo.

thanks for the clarification.

Also, is Robenalt's remark, Oswald was still in the building supported by fact?  Seems a leap to me but I've not studied the timeline related to this photo that closely.  And, is it odd that he/they chose the McIntire photo of Landis instead of others ... assuming there are others?