20 minutes ago, Vince Palamara said:

Oh, yes- I am much aware of this photo. You can see Shift Leader (ATSAIC) Emory Roberts in the front passenger seat on the radio microphone. Interestingly, he was ALSO on the radio microphone during the shooting, as one can plainly see in the famous Altgens photo facing the front of the limo.

Do you know at what point Landis hitched a ride?

The Kennedy stretcher bullet in a vial. Photo credit: NIST

Somehow, his statement from 40 years ago has been forgotten or unmentioned.

Listen To This Story

 

A WhoWhatWhy Exclusive

An explosive new claim from a retired Secret Service agent that appears to support a conspiracy in the death of John F. Kennedy is significantly contradicted by a forgotten interview he gave 40 years ago. That long-ago interview is not mentioned in his book or in coverage this week by major media. 

In his upcoming book, heavily promoted in pieces in The New York Times and Vanity Fair, Secret Service agent Paul Landis says he has kept a secret all these years: that, on November 22, 1963, at Dallas’s Parkland Hospital, he discovered an intact, almost pristine bullet lying on the upholstered material atop the seat on which Kennedy sat when he was shot. 

He says he put the bullet in his pocket and then placed it on Kennedy’s stretcher, telling no one until now. 

If true, that would, for complex reasons to be explained below, suggest that a second gunman had been involved. That would make Kennedy’s death a conspiracy, which many believe to be the case. (WhoWhatWhy has reported several well-documented stories on deception in the official narrative. A few are listed below.)

Related: Kennedy Assassination: Evidence Seen by JFK’s Doctor Suppressed – WhoWhatWhy

Related: Navy Doctor: Bullet Found in JFK’s Limousine, and Never Reported – WhoWhatWhy

Related: JFK Assassination: The Tell-Tale Brain – WhoWhatWhy

Related: JFK Murder: Evolving Strategies for Damage Control – WhoWhatWhy

However, in an Associated Press article for the 20th anniversary of JFK’s death published in November 1983, Landis mentioned, in a remark that seems to have gotten little attention at the time — and not been mentioned since — that he found a bullet “fragment” on the seat back. 

In his new book, Landis makes no mention of his 1983 statement; nor does the New York Times or Vanity Fair. 

Of course, a bullet “fragment” is far from an intact bullet, so Landis’s most recent account of what he found on that tragic day changes the potential interpretation of such alleged evidence. 

It is important to state that none of this lends any more or less credence to any particular position on the assassination and whether it was a conspiracy. It does, however, raise questions about Landis’s story.

Vanity Fair Account 

According to a highly detailed account in Vanity Fair of Landis’s claims, written by James Robenalt, an attorney and author, who worked with Landis to “process his thoughts” as the book came together: 

That horror was compounded when the president’s limo reached Parkland Memorial Hospital, where Landis and Clint Hill tried to coax Jackie to release the president, whom, by that point, she had cradled in her lap. Climbing into the back seat area, which had been spattered with blood and brains and bullet fragments, both agents, according to their subsequent accounts, gently encouraged the first lady to let go.

As she did — standing up to follow Hill and another agent, Roy Kellerman, who lifted her

husband’s body onto a gurney and raced into the hospital — Landis saw and did something that he has kept secret for six decades, he says now. He claims he spotted a bullet resting on the top of the back of the seat. He says he picked it up, put it in his pocket, and brought it into the hospital. Then, upon entering Trauma Room No. 1 (at that stage, he was the only nonmedical person in the room besides Mrs. Kennedy, and both stayed for only a short period), he insists, he placed the bullet on a white cotton blanket on the president’s stretcher.

This secret, as it turns out, may upend key conclusions of the Warren Commission, the body created by President Lyndon Johnson to investigate the assassination.

[Emphasis added]

Thus, Landis is now clearly stating what he found in the car was a whole bullet, as distinguished from fragments. 

But in his 1983 Associated Press interview, according to the AP account, 

Landis said that when he got to the Kennedy limousine outside the hospital, the president had already been taken inside, but he helped Mrs. Kennedy out. He said there was a bullet fragment on the top of the back seat that he picked up and gave to somebody.

So, in that version, it was a fragment, and, instead of putting it on Kennedy’s stretcher, he gave it to someone else. 

What His Current Claim Means 

The basis for believing that Lee Harvey Oswald acted solo as the “lone assassin” rested in part on a general agreement about how many shots Oswald’s rifle could have gotten off in a span of only a few seconds. 

According to the long-standing official scenario: One bullet hit the street, dislodging a piece of concrete that injured a bystander; a second bullet went through both Kennedy and Connally; and a third and final bullet was the kill shot to Kennedy’s head. 

The problem with this theoretical reconstruction is that the second bullet not only had to have passed through Kennedy but then also continued on a remarkable and somewhat tortured trajectory through Texas Gov. John Connally, who was seated in front of Kennedy in the limousine. Connally suffered a fracture of the fifth rib, a punctured lung, a shattered wrist, and had a tiny bullet fragment lodged in his leg. 

To explain this, Arlen Specter of the Warren Commission, the official body assigned by new President Lyndon Johnson to investigate the assassination, devised what came to be known as the “single bullet theory.” 

The theory has been widely doubted because of that bullet’s almost magical alleged trajectory while causing all those injuries. Indeed, Connally and his wife both stated that they saw Kennedy reacting to a shot before Connally himself was hit just a moment later. As Connally testified, “The thought immediately passed through my mind that there were either two or three people involved … or someone was shooting with an automatic rifle … because of the rapidity of these two, of the first shot plus the blow that I took, and I knew I had been hit …”  

And then there is the matter of the condition of the bullet. 

As Robenalt explains it: 

That theory posits that a single bullet caused all of the wounds in Kennedy’s neck as well as all of the serious injuries to Texas governor John Connally — who was sitting in front of the president at the time — including the shattering of four inches of Connolly’s fifth rib and the fracturing of a major bone in his right wrist.

Yet the bullet that Landis now claims to have discovered that morning emerged largely intact and only moderately damaged, its base having been squeezed in.

Robenalt’s point is that such a relatively pristine bullet could not possibly have caused all those injuries. In addition, the doctors at Kennedy’s autopsy found only a shallow hole in his back, suggesting that the bullet that made this hole stopped mid-body and somehow was dislodged or perhaps removed just prior to the official autopsy procedure. 

Which leads to the conclusion that at least four shots were fired. And, as mentioned above, we know that — according to numerous official investigations — Oswald could not have gotten off more than three in the allotted time. So, Landis’s new revelation that he found a nearly pristine bullet in the car, just above where Kennedy was sitting, implies that this was the “fourth bullet,” which could only have been fired by a ”second shooter,” thereby proving there must have been a conspiracy. 

However, the discovery that Landis previously had spoken about this some 20 years after the event (neither Vanity Fair nor the New York Times mention this) and that Landis had described what he found as a mere fragment seriously undermines what he is saying now. 

A second point adds to the doubts. In his forthcoming book, Landis says that he pocketed the bullet, and then put it on a white blanket on Kennedy’s stretcher. 

But in 1983, he told AP that he gave the fragment to another person. No pocket, no blanket, no stretcher. 

Landis, 88, was not available for an interview at publication time. However, in an interview with WhoWhatWhy today, Robenalt said he was aware that Landis’s story has changed. He pointed out that he had alluded to this in his Vanity Fair article, without going into specifics. 

Robenalt, a well-connected Cleveland lawyer who says he had always accepted the “lone gunman” story until meeting Landis, has advised Landis on a public relations strategy around the articles in Vanity Fair and in The New York Times, with the latter’s “exclusive” arranged through White House correspondent Peter Baker, whom Robenalt has known and worked with on other stories. 

Robenalt says that Landis, who resigned from the service within months of Dallas and who, like his colleagues in the Secret Service, faced major trauma and guilt over the assassination, almost entirely avoided any of the debate and emerging claims over the years and had trouble coming out with his full story. (In fact, he was never interviewed by the Warren Commission or FBI, and was never asked what happened that day.) In two reports to his own agency he never mentioned finding that bullet.

Asked whether he knew about the 1983 statement, Robenalt paused briefly, then said Landis told him that he had been misquoted in the AP story. But he went on to acknowledge that Landis had recounted essentially the same bullet-fragment story in The Kennedy Detail: JFK’s Secret Service Agents Break Their Silence. This was a 2010 account written by former presidential detail agent Gerald Blaine and a journalist, Lisa McCubbin, with the participation of Clint Hill,  who became famous for crawling on the trunk of the limousine to protect Jackie Kennedy as she clambered backwards.  

Robenalt says Landis, who didn’t know McCubbin well, wasn’t sure whether he should trust her, so he withheld the truth about what really happened. But then in 2014, after reading Josiah “Tink” Thompson’s 1967 book, Six Seconds in Dallas, and seeing for the first time the “official” explanation that a whole bullet had been found on Connally’s stretcher, he realized that, no, that was actually the bullet he had found in Kennedy’s limousine, and that he shouldn’t remain silent any longer. 

Landis communicated with Hill about what he now says he actually saw and did, and Hill   cautioned him to be careful about damaging the Secret Service’s reputation further. This was shortly after one of the Service’s biggest scandals, a 2012 trip to Colombia, where, tasked with protecting President Obama, agents cavorted with prostitutes. It’s interesting that Hill’s own story about what he saw also changed over the years, but in the direction of the official account. Hill now is expressing doubts about Landis’s recollections.

And here’s a kicker: a Parkland student nurse, Sharon Tuohy, being interviewed in the 1970s by staffers for another panel, the House Select Committee on Assassinations, recounting how she had seen a bullet on Kennedy’s stretcher.   

The agents’ stories’ evolution over the years also raises questions about the incredibly high stakes involved, and at WhoWhatWhy we’re committed to investigating further. Should others have more information, please contact us. 

---

Author

• 
  Russ Baker

  Russ Baker is Editor-in-Chief of WhoWhatWhy. He is an award-winning investigative journalist who specializes in exploring power dynamics behind major events.

2 hours ago, Jonathan Cohen said:

What are you talking about? Landis' story is being given PLENTY of scrutiny right now - have you failed to notice the half-dozen different threads here on the subject?

I'm addressing the initial analysis of David Talbot and Jefferson Morley.  Can't you read?

An example of more objective analysis here:

https://whowhatwhy.org/culture/newest-jfk-twist-agents-explosive-story-conflicts-with-forgotten-earlier-one/?utm_source=WhoWhatWhy+Now&utm_campaign=aecdfbff1b-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2_1_2021_16_41_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_6b3f79a618-aecdfbff1b-251592689

2 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

The fact that he. still buys the Lone Gunman shows how omni present the pressure is.

Is that the only conclusion one can draw?

If he is still under that degree of pressure, why did he publish a book?

A prime candidate for "Nick" at the Carousel Club, Nick Popich:

As noted in this government record, Popich had known William Wayne Dalzell* since Dalzell was a young lad. 

Popich had agreed that if Dalzell — who had significant experience in the oil industry in Yemen in particular — could arrange anything concrete with any Middle East government, he/Popich Marine Construction would be on board any feasible project.

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=68908#relPageId=1&search=addis_ababba

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.**

At the time, Popich was operating the Vieux Carré, a venue he co-owned with Marcello. Buried in remarks we find that Andrew "Moo Moo" Sciambra shared a passion for boxing with Popich who employed him at the restaurant. 

Fast forward, it was Asst. DA Sciambra who provided memos to his boss Jim Garrison outlining the activities of Popich's friend for decades, Bill Dalzell  including a brief collaboration with Ed Butler of INCA which was partially funded by Dallas oilman Clint Murchison. I've not found any indication that Moo Moo disclosed to Garrison his past employment at Popich's Vieux Carré; we do have reason to consider the restaurant also employed sous chef Jean Martin a.k.a. Pierre Lafitte at the time.
 

Scenes from Lafitte’s New OrleansIn 1961, with significant funding from Californian industrialist Patrick J. Frawley and Dallas oilman Clint Murchison, mentioned previously as a financial benefactor of Ferenc Nagy’s Permindex, and with financial support from his friends at International Trade Mart, Lloyd Cobb and Director Clay Shaw, twenty-seven-year-old Ed Butler founded the Information Council of the Americas (INCA). His publications under that banner were relied on by the CIA in a blitz of propaganda just prior to the invasion at the Bay of Pigs which could explain his association with Deputy Director CIA, Charles Cabell. Some of their money went toward a film titled Hitler in Havana, reviewed as a “tasteless affront to minimum journalistic standards” by the New York Times.      Researchers will be aware that Butler was a member of “Free Voice of Latin America” for a short time before being ousted for his extreme right political views. Its own secretary treasurer, William Klein who filed incorporation papers which designated a young Cuban student at Univ of Tulane as president, and a shy, intelligent former citizen of Belize Honduras as vice president, wrote in a recap of the organization for DA Jim Garrison, “The life of the Free Voice as a corporate entity was ephemeral and uneventful. For my own part it was an absolute bore.”       The letter states that Ed Butler’s globe-encircling communist conspiracy theory quickly made his removal from office mandatory. According to Grand Jury testimony, the originator of the concept of Free Voice was William Dalzell. He testified that along with Klein (who according to an investigator present during Grand Jury later went to work at the Office of Naval Intelligence in DC), he wanted to “warn Latin America of what has transpired here since Castro has been in power for the last few years.” Klein’s dismissive remarks about the organization as well as his version of Butler’s role at Free Voice contradicts Dalzell’s testimony in several areas, including that Butler was never active because INCA was in effect competing with Free Voice. However, there is no doubt that Butler and Dalzell were well acquainted in spite of his claims. 



* On Wednesday, April 17, Pierre Lafitte made the following entry: “Dalzell – K money for Drilling.” Three days earlier, Lafitte’s entry reads, “Delong meet with T. Cuba.” We have reason to believe that “Delong” is a reference to the patent holder of various designs of heavy equipment for the oil industry, Leon Delong; we know that Dalzell had been attempting to raise money in New Orleans for another of his oil related schemes, and we know that he had been employed briefly in Odessa, Texas by Dixilyn Drilling the same year that the West Texas oil company invested in the “Julie Ann,” one of the first floating, self-contained platform rigs with jack-up legs for off-shore drilling designed by Texan R. G. LeTourneau.*** An oil industry manufacturing magnate, LeTourneau had been in joint ventures with Delong. The “Julie Ann” was the fifth such jack up rig based in Longview, Texas (the first two being commissioned by Zapata Oil founded by George H. W. Bush who held extensive contracts with LeTourneau). Three months later, on July 17, Lafitte wrote “-Dalzell crazy? (Rene says ignore his antics.)” Bill Dalzell had been in psychiatric care the summer of 1963. 

**  Author G. R. Schreiber in a book published in 1964 by ultra-conservative Regnery Press, The Bobby Baker Affair: How to Make Millions in Washington, confirms Lafitte’s entries when he writes that East German born Ellen Rometsch, on at least one occasion “went along with Bobby and Nancy Carole [Tyler] and Paul Aguirre, a friend from Puerto Rico, on a jaunt to New Orleans.” Continues Schreiber, “The chief counsel for the Senate Rules Committee said that Bobby's Puerto Rican friend told committee investigators that if he were ‘asked anything about what took place [on the trip to New Orleans] he would take all the amendments, from 1 to 28.’” We see from Pierre Lafitte entries that later in the year a shipment of LSD from New Orleans to Dallas was on the cards. Schreiber goes on, “The Rules Committee did not call Paul Aguirre, but Senator Hugh Scott reported on some of what the Puerto Rican told the committee's investigators. "Mr. Aguirre admitted that Baker brought Carole Tyler and Ellen Rometsch with him from Washington to New Orleans on the May, 1963, trip.’” This claim coincides with Lafitte’s record of May 14: “Carole – (airport) Paul Aguirre  Others?” 

*** Dr. Lawrence Alderson stated that a Captain, first name unknown, Letourneau [sic]  replaced him at the depot in Petette Malioun, France, and it is his understanding that Captain Letourneau became well acquainted with [OAS Captain Jean Rene] Souetre. He stated Letourneau was from Texas, but he does not know his address.

6 minutes ago, Jonathan Cohen said:

On what planet are "seasoned researchers" blindly accepting Landis' story "unconditionally" ? Nothing of the sort is happening. It's also bizarre for you to make such a statement when you're the one unwilling to engage in honest debate about the authenticity of the alleged datebook at the heart of "Coup in Dallas" ...

In fairness, Talbot is using Landis' revelation to apply further pressure on mainstream media, but what if Landis's mea culpa unravels under scrutiny that should have been applied from the outset to get ahead of the cynics? (obviously I'm projecting here ... Coup in Dallas should not have been published until we secured professional written authentication of the datebook, full stop.)

55 minutes ago, Charles Blackmon said:

Guess he screwed up. We will get a chance to hear his explanations I am sure. What about all the failures to follow rules of evidence by the Dallas police that weekend? What about Roscoe White shenanigans? When do we get explanations for that?

 

 

You're making my point, Charles.  Why would seasoned researchers who have exposed the ineptitude of DPD turn around and accept what could be read as Landis's belated mea culpa unconditionally? Why not "ask the questions"?


 

5 hours ago, Larry Hancock said:

Impaired judgement certainly could be a factor, although he says there was not drinking Debra Conway interviewed the club owner who freely admitted they kept liquor and served it at the club (I think he said something like "why would somebody be here at 3AM drinking coke"?)  and all the patrons including the SS were drinking; he even said an agent came in some time afterwards and asked him not to say that since things had been really  hard on the agents and they really didn't need charge that along with everything else...

On the other hand, after the shooting and the car ride their systems should really have been peaked out by chemicals and if nothing else I'd expect them to be hyper - but diminished faculties would go nicely with incompetence if he wants to admit that - I'm just not willing to give him any sort of break in regard to some sort of special concern being in play about reporting and handling the evidence properly in order not to make waves in the first couple of hours after the attack.... 

I'm dismayed that in their enthusiasm — and regardless of how significant a smoking bullet might be to the investigation — David Talbot and Jefferson Morley seem to have failed (thus far) to publicly acknowledge the fundamental issues with Landis's personal story, so I'm relieved to read your concerns, @Larry Hancock. 

I'm even more dismayed that NYT, The Guardian, The Independent, Vanity Fair have inexplicably leapt over basic precepts of investigative journalism to publish sensational headlines, eureka! witness breaks his silence and raises new questions which leads me to consider concerns expressed by others that this might be a limited hangout or a more complex "revelation of the method."
 

• If SS agents weren't trained in the fundamentals of crime scene preservation, evidence gathering and reporting, weren't they at least vetted for common sense?
• Why then did Landis remove evidence from a crime scene (limo) and relocate it to a stretcher instead of handing it off to his superior or at the very least local authorities?
• Why didn't he mark the bullet?
• Why didn't he record his finding in a report?
• Did PTSD impede him from fulfilling his oath to support and defend democracy in the ensuing years?
• How could he avoid the WCR and Specter's "magic bullet" theory for decades?
• Did he state as late as 2013 that he believed a lone gunman was responsible for Kennedy's assassination?
• Did the trauma overwhelm him for six decades?

In his own words published by alt-right Gateway Pundit which headlines Robert Kennedy Jr's reaction, Landis states:

"There was nobody there to secure the scene, and that was a big, big bother to me. All the agents that were there were focused on the president."

So, Landis was concerned that the scene hadn't been secured yet he himself lifted a bullet (or fragment??)  from the limo, took it inside the building, placed it on a stretcher, and never reported it or spoke of it publicly again — until the 60th anniversary ... not the  55th, or 57th, or 59th, but The 60th.

If leading spokespersons for "the community" fail to address the most basic questions, how long before conspiracy skeptics and cynics add this episode to the list?

I'm dismayed that in their enthusiasm — and regardless of how significant a smoking bullet is to the investigation — David Talbot and Jefferson Morley seem to have failed (thus far) to publicly acknowledge the fundamental issues with Landis's personal story. 

I'm even more dismayed that NYT, The Guardian, The Independent, Vanity Fair have inexplicably leapt over basic precepts of investigative journalism to publish sensational headlines, "witness breaks his silence and raises new questions" which leads me to consider a fellow researcher's concerns (paraphrasing): is this a limited hangout?

 

• If SS agents weren't trained in the fundamentals of crime scene preservation, evidence gathering and reporting, weren't they at least vetted for common sense? 
• Why then would Landis remove evidence from a crime scene (limo) and relocate it to a stretcher instead of handing it off to his superior or at the very least local authorities?
• Why didn't he mark the bullet? 
• Why didn't he record his finding in a report?
• Did PTSD impede him from fulfilling his oath to support and defend democracy for decades?
• How could he avoid the WCR and Specter's "magic bullet" theory for decades? 
• Did he state as late as 2013 that he believed a lone gunman was responsible for Kennedy's assassination?
• Did the trauma overwhelm him for six decades?

In his own words published by alt-right The Gateway Pundit which headlines Robert Kennedy Jr's reaction, Landis goes unchallenged when he states:

"There was nobody there to secure the scene, and that was a big, big bother to me. All the agents that were there were focused on the president."

So, Landis was concerned that the scene hadn't been secured yet he himself lifted a bullet from the limo, took it inside the building, placed it on a stretcher, and never reported it or spoke of it publicly again until the 60th anniversary ... not the 45th, or 55th, or 57th, or 59th, but the 60th.

If leading spokespersons for "the community" fail to address the most basic questions, how long before conspiracy skeptics add this episode to the list?

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/09/jfk-assassination-witness-breaks-60-year-silence-blows/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=jfk-assassination-witness-breaks-60-year-silence-blows

' . . . Significantly, in 1980, author and expert JFK researcher Dick Russell spoke to Mike Ewing, an investigator for the US House Select Committee on Assassinations, just as the committee was closing operations. Ewing told Russell that Jean Souetre “was connected with people involved with murders or political assassinations in Europe.”

Continued Ewing: “[Souetre] was most definitely in the same circles of OAS-connected killers. The agency [CIA] admits that its own handlers of QJ/WIN and WI/ROUGE were afraid of them; that they were not following CIA directives; and that they were off on assassination plots of their own. The CIA was trying to keep them on a leash because it was afraid to cut them off.” 

            Souetre’s companion at the meeting in Lisbon was his compatriot, Guerin-Serac who before he established Aginter Press, had been a French soldier serving in France, before fighting in the Korean Conflict in the early 1950s, and “possibly served as a liaison man between the CIA and the French services.” Guillou/Guerin-Serac had also been a master parachutist in Algeria, “before he deserted the French army and joined the OAS rebellion. (This at the very same time as Jean Rene Souetre.) After Algerian independence and the OAS’s defeat, he emigrated to Spain and then to Portugal, the last colonial empire that appeared willing to fight for Western values over ‘communist imperialism.’”  

            Historians Michael Bale and Franco Ferraresi have emphasized Guerin-Serac’s instructive writings for novice terrorists, which, although written over fifty years ago, appear tailor-made for today’s senior terrorists. Some apt excerpts from Guerin-Serac’s manual Missions Spéciales are:

—Subversion acts with appropriate means upon the minds and wills in order to induce them to act outside all logic, against all rules, against all laws. In this way, it conditions individuals and enables one to make use of them as one wishes.

—Action psychologique [is] a nonviolent weapon [used] to condition public opinion through the use of the press, the radio, conferences, demonstrations, etc. . . . with the goal of uniting the masses against the authorities.

—Terrorism breaks the population’s resistance, obtains its submission, and provokes a rupture between the population and the authorities. . . . There is a seizure of power over the masses through the creation of a climate of anxiety, insecurity, and danger.

—Selective terrorism . . . destroys the political and administrative apparatus by eliminating the cadres of those organs.

—Indiscriminate terrorism . . . destroys the confidence of the people by disorganizing the masses so as to manipulate them more effectively. 

As mentioned, the two years before forming Aginter, Guerin-Serac both trained and served as a trainer in the arts of sabotage, explosives, and assassination at Otto Skorzeny’s secret training camps outside of Madrid. Indeed, Guerin-Serac, along with Jean Rene Souetre, were considered Skorzeny’s most competent trainers, and they were often called upon to work with US Special Forces who attended the camps. About this same time, claim several European historians, “US Army special forces began a program of targeting Western/NATO installations in Belgium, while disguising themselves as terrorists.”  

***

In early 1962, when Guerin-Serac first moved to establish Aginter Press, he acted in concert with Robert Leroy*, a French SS officer during the war and WWII Nazi SS officer Otto Skorzeny, both of whom served as the strategic leadership for Aginter. Leroy was a prewar member of Charles Maurras’ Action Française, a Far-Right political group, and then as an active member of La Cagoule’s terrorist underground. He took part in the Requête Carlist militia forces during the Spanish Civil War and then served as a Vichy intelligence operative. He was also a member of the Waffen SS Charlemagne division and was a key member of Otto Skorzeny’s commando forces, where he served as an instructor. Along with Skorzeny, following the end of the war, Leroy served as a lead instructor with Skorzeny’s efforts to train Egyptian leader Abd al-Nasir’s intelligence and security services, after recruiting a hundred German advisers from Nazi soldiers serving during WWII, the SS underground, and from among technical experts with military industries. The purpose was to train Arab guerrillas in commando tactics and in protecting the former Nazi technicians working for Nasir from Israeli “hit” teams. The job was carried out at the CIA’s bequest.”   

            Professor Tunander writes revealingly of Aginter: 

[The] international fascist intelligence network, Aginter Press, was established to implement the Strategy of Tension, with support from the Portuguese security service PIDE and the CIA. This network included a unit specializing in the infiltration of anarchist and pro-Chinese groups, and its “correspondents” would use such organizations as a cover for carrying out bombings and other violent attacks. Aginter Press also included a strategic centre for subversion and intoxication [drugging and poisonings] operations, along with an executive action organization that carried out assassinations (most likely the same “pool of assassins” that William Harvey, CIA station Chief in Italy, had recruited in Europe for the CIA’s “Executive Action Capability”). All of these divisions of Aginter Press were under the leadership of French OAS officer and former US liaison officer Captain Yves Guillou (alias Yves Guerin Serac), in collaboration with Robert Leroy, a former French SS officer, and Otto Skorzeny, a senior German SS officer. [Italics added]         A portentous January 1968 affidavit sworn by Aginter Press assassin and Jean Rene Souetre associate Jacques Godard reveals the group’s relationship with certain American persons and organizations: “In the course of our services we had relations with certain persons and organizations like, for example, President Tschombe and with Biafra. We likewise were in charge of relations with the John Birch Society which was an American political group financed especially by Texas oil producers whose activity is absolutely anti-communist. Everywhere where there is a struggle, either open or covert, with communists, the John Birch Society [JBS] lends its financial aid to the people who are struggling against international communism.”   The reader encounters the significance of the Texas oil producers and the Dallas branch of the JBS in Chapter 1, “Lay of the Land,” to further understand the width and breadth of influence of Aginter Press and similar fascist organizations . . . '

 

*Leroy and Roux

' . . . [Pierre] Lafitte’s notation for November 4th is as intriguing as any in the 1963 datebook. The names “Leroy” and “Roux” appear on either side of sketches that appear to be a representation of “crossfire,” as if he is noting the position of the two men involved in an operation. Because the two names do not appear at any other time in the datebook, it is possible that the date provides us with a clue. On November 1, the manager seems perturbed: “trail run—mistakes a plenty. not good.” The following day, November 2, he draws a smaller version of the sketch for November 4 . . . '

On 8/11/2023 at 8:52 AM, Michael Clark said:

Hi Linda, I am not recalling those crypts. I has been a while though. Do you have a link to document that you can share?

CABLE CONCERNING ALEX DES FONTAINES STORY THAT "THEY" WERE PLOTTING AGAINST PRESIDENT KENNEDY AND THAT "SOMETHING" WOULD HAPPEN IN TEXAS.

NARA Record Number: 104-10015-10150

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=190795#relPageId=8&search=INTARZAN

14 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

What about any updates from Kossor or this Blackwell guy, who i never head of before.

I am really surprised if the laptop cannot be salvaged. 

As Mr. Butler had said, you can do that.  

Does anyone know anything about this at all?  

Alan Kent was in communication with Litton so I believe he might be willing to answer some of these questions. No doubt you have his PM.

21 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

More info on Mataxis Leslie? 

I'm surprised a search of MFF for Mataxis yields only three hits, one of which is Major Ralph Ganis's work.

The introduction to Operation Eiche: The Rescue of Benito Mussolini published by the US Army Special Operations Command History Office captures the spirit of Mataxis's history with SS Skorzeny. Obviously we need more to confirm that the two soldiers were in communication in the early 1960s but according to this, theirs was a "lifelong professional relationship." 

If you're in a position to do so, you might ask Ralph Ganis whether Otto and Ilse's papers contain information related to Mataxis that didn't make it into his book?  Also, if you have Dr. Newman's books you might check whether he looked into Mataxis over the years? I would think anyone in the room with the JCS in 1963 would be of interest.

1 hour ago, Evan Marshall said:

Seen John Newman's latest podcast?  Seems clear the men behind the curtain were the Joint Chiefs and they had no lead for ex Nazi's and Boots Askins, while Harvey, Morales, and JM Wave gunman make perfect sense.

You might review the following related to General Theodore C. Mataxis, protegé of Lyman Lemnitzer throughout his military career and in 1963, XO to the Chairman of Joint Chiefs Max Taylor.


As Major Ralph Ganis reveals  in The Skorzeny Papers:Evidence for the Plot to Kill JFK,  Camp King —  formerly used by the German Luftwaffe — was an interrogation facility under the command of Col. Roy M. Thoroughman who oversaw the day to day functioning of the camp once the  7707th European command took control. Their mission was the exploitation of persons and documents for intelligence purposes.

According to Ganis, "One of the most highly classified areas of operation was the interrogation of German scientists, intelligence officers, and other prisoners of war deemed of value to Western intelligence efforts, and many were recruited into U.S. Intelligence and scientific programs."

 Captain Henry P. Schardt was intelligence chief and carried out the mission under the cover of the 7734th History Detachment commanded by Col. Harold E. Potter.  Writes Ganis, "So as not to draw attention to the real reason they were sent to Camp King, it was Potter's unit that SS Otto Skorzeny and >>> Radl were assigned to upon their arrival at Camp King. Captain Theodore C. Mataxis was assigned as their control officer at the historical detachment.

. . . It will be recalled that upon his initial arrival at Camp King in 1947, Skorzeny's was assigned to Captain Theodore C. Mataxis of the U.S. Army historical detachment.  The historical work was the clandestine discussion between Skorzeny and the intelligence staff for his future role in covert operations

Following his post at Camp King, "Mataxis advanced to commander of the 505th during which time he was aware of the various training centers in Europe as well as special training schools set up with NATO countries and MAAG.  He was also aware of the secret training being conducted in Spain by Otto Skorzeny"

. . . .  In early 1960, First Lt. Anthony Herbert, serving under Mataxis, developed a concept for a new ranger unit to be formed within the 505th. Herbert took the idea to Col. Theodore Mataxis who gave Herbet his approval to form the group. . . . Herbert's first task was to train the unit and received permission from Mataxis to canvas Europe for training courses to hone the skills of his men.

In the fall of 1960, the unit set off for France to cross-train with French Foreign Legionnaires and elite Franch Air Force Commandos.  The French training area was located just outside the city of Pau, not far from the border with Spain. . . . Years later, Herbert recorded his memories of Pau including conversation with the French commandos who shared with him that they were actually training with Skorzeny. According to Ganis, "Of course Mataxis was fully aware of the sensitivity of MAAG's association with Skorzeny's paramilitary group and proceeded carefully. Herbert would later confirm the sensitive relationship in his book, stating that Skorzeny "was still being very careful," and that the training was "conducted by a small group of German soldiers" who"had formed a corporation whose service was arming and training groups of guerrillas." Herbert and Skorzeny would then meet in the mounts of the Basque region, in the mounts of the North. . . . 

After you've absorbed the implications, we can revisit Col. Akins' own history with Otto Skorzeny in Madrid . . . and from there, we can pursue the role Taylor's XO, Gen. Mataxis would have played over the weekend of November 22 as the Joint Chiefs hosted meetings with Adenauer's top generals of the Bundeswehr (most of whom were Otto's "Volksgemeinschaft") in the Gold Room at the Pentagon.

with the rare exception of overt hate-group types. 

What about the covert haters who weigh in with attempts to normalize racism, anti-Semitism, fascism, misogyny in the guise of liberty and collegial exchange?

There was a time when those in pursuit of the facts — for example the 1963 cold case murder investigation — would recognize the card being played here: you and yours attempting to diminish the important contribution of EF.

How about this for a public relations campaign: Roger Stone Infiltrated the JFK Community; now let's drive him and his acolytes from the tent? 

On 8/25/2023 at 12:21 AM, James DiEugenio said:

Milicent Cranor chimes in on Facebook:

Hey Jimmy! Interesting article. But I was surprised to read you had not known of the Mastrovito interview, since I'd written about it for you in PROBE. It was in, "On the Rim of the Black Hole" under the subhed "A Bit of Brain Down the Drain." And, since you're intereted in this issue, here's more on what Vrtacmik saw (from my story, "Traces of Witness Tampering"):

Kenneth Vrtacnik, a medical photographer at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, told Douglas Home... Highlights of the 11/12/96 interview:

Number of Bullet Paths? Unsure

He described it as “one long section, tan in color” with “wooden pegs (or arrows) showing bullet trajectories running through it. Asked if there was one peg, or more than one peg, he said he was unsure, but later in the interview again used the word “pegs.”

Size? Unsure

Asked what percentage of the brain it was, he said he could not be sure and declined to give an estimation. He would not even say whether it was less than one-half, or more than one-half, said he “could not be sure.”

r it was perforated by one peg or two would have been obvious to a child. How could he have been unsure about this? I doubt if a failing memory explains it. He had a keen interest in the assassination. He went to the trouble to get a look at this forbidden item. How could he forget what he saw, especially if it so dramatically contradicted the government?

In this case, what seems superimposed is not an image, but amnesia, a blank with a distinct outline that has become very familiar to those of us who research this crime. But it may be that Kenneth Vrtacnik was so meticulous he would rather say nothing than be wrong in the slightest way.

I didn't understand that last paragraph of Cranor's -- what did she mean about "superimposed?"  So I looked up the article it came from and found the answer.  The first paragraph explains it:

https://history-matters.com/essays/jfkmed/TracesOfWitnessTampering/TracesOfWitnessTampering.htm

In a composite photograph, you can see the hard edge of the matte line around the superimposed image. There may be nothing wrong with the component parts of the picture, but you still know it is a composite because of that hard edge. The same is true of a verbal picture. Much of the original testimony in the case of John Kennedy’s assassination - when viewed as a whole - creates a verbal picture suggesting conspiracy. But when new testimony was obtained from the same witnesses, many revised their stories, and the picture that evolved, taken at face value, is less suggestive of conspiracy. The interesting thing is, many revised only parts of their stories - but in each case, it was the same part revised the same way. This unnatural sameness has created a hard edge, what I think of as the matte line of a lie.

@W. NiederhutJulius Evola: Evola (1898–1974) was an Italian Philosopher, an advocate of an elitist, idealist variety of Fascism, or some might say Nazism. Influenced by Plato, Nietzsche, Oswald Spengler, Evola espoused an anti-democratic and anti-Semitic return to semi-mystical forms of Medieval Chivalry. During the war Evola met Mussolini immediately after the latter was rescued by Skorzeny. He may also have met Skorzeny there, but this is unconfirmed. His vision inspired Count Valerio Borghese, who wrote an introduction to Evola's book Men Among the Ruins, and also international terrorist (still living today) Stefano Delle Chiaie.

In 2017 there was a resurgence of interest in Evola's work, and President Donald Trump's advisor Steve Bannon and also "Putin's Rasputin,” Aleksandr Dugin should be cited among the thinkers of the Right who have been influenced by Evola. Intriguingly, his name also appears in works of fiction such as Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum and Peter Levenda's "Lovecraft Code" —Ran Daniel, researcher, writer and research associate of author H. P. Albarelli Jr.

18 minutes ago, Larry Hancock said:

First, I would say Oswald was in Mexico City in the hopes of getting a travel visa to enter Cuba, based on a hardship claim for his wife and the argument that he was as a supporter of the Cuban revolution - which is why it took considerable support material with him and why he showed a good bit of it to Duran.  He was well aware of the travel barrier he faced with the Russians, giving he had been making the case primarily for Marina since the first of the year and had been told as recently as July no permission would be granted until  after the birth of their new baby. 

I make no claim to be able to get inside his head but he had success with convincing the Soviets on matters before, while being a pain to them in both entering and leaving Russia; perhaps he thought the Cubans would be easier to wear down or perhaps more sympathetic.  Given his experience with Soviet bureaucracy he also may have thought he might have more luck going to a relatively small Russian diplomatic unit (as he had done before) where they might respond more to a personal appeal - at least getting something he could use to show the Cubans that would get him as far as Cuba, even if no further.  We have taken for granted he was aware of the Cuban rule about transit visas but that was a relatively new thing (after the missile crisis in late 1062) and its possible that their solid stand on that was a surprise to him. From his reading I suspect he would have known that Americans did travel through Mexico to Cuba.

Second, no not at all, my web site is woefully old and after having it hacked twice we have made no further attempt to update it, what I learned about AMWORLD as an operation is largely in Shadow Warfare, but in terms of associated personnel is extended in the Wheaton Leads monograph, the book In Denial, and in Tipping Point. 

Thanks for this summary. Presumably then, if Oswald was being guided to Mexico City he was totally oblivious of the fact and believed himself to be in control of his destiny?

RE. AMWORLD, and setting aside your respectful skepticism of the Lafitte datebook, I had reason to ask you about the possibility —hypothetically speaking of course — that meetings in New Orleans in August involving in some manner George Joannides, Charlie Siragusa, George Hunter White, and JC King could have been related to AMWORLD. You indicated that by then King was head of the Western Division in name only and (if I understood correctly) the now infamous operation wasn't actually a serious plan to re-invade Cuba from Haiti.  Had it been, why didn't the invasion ensue within weeks or at least months of Kennedy's assassination? Instead, Johnson turned his eye toward VN and abandoned Cuba altogether?

I'm not offended. The flaw in your hypothesis speaks for itself.

Your ignorance related to Marcello's motive, means and opportunity compounded by your public disparagement of the character of JFK and RFK in order to rationalize (or justify?) their assassinations will not go unchallenged.

We've encountered similar from those who intimate Otto Skorzeny did The West a service by taking out a communist appeaser.

2 hours ago, Larry Hancock said:

Just to be contrarian I don't see Mexico City as important in establishing an image for Oswald - by the time he left New Orleans he had been on radio, the newspapers, in Court and on TV as an activist Castro supporter.  I've not been able to make much of an impression with the fact that we have learned the DRE was heavily propagandizing  that in Miami in late August and September - including letters on Oswald to different exile groups and was even writing to Congress about Oswald as  a perfect example of evil Cuban influence. I'm afraid a lot of Jeff Moreley's great work is not getting really registered - including confirmation from DRE senior officers that they were happy to be leveraging Oswald in propaganda as they is what the CIA was paying them to do. 

We also know that a record was being made that fall for use in propaganda against Castro based on his visibility in NO, it was ready for distribution at the time of the assassination and that INCA had a whole campaign built around it (possibly with Phillips support) and there were other elements of a campaign ready and in progress ( lay this all out in Tipping Point).  Phillips had already prepared one of his private news sources for the story on Oswald as linked to Cuba and Russia - and on the day of the assassination reporters were being referred to him by AP. You did not need Mexico City to produce the newspaper headlines I put on the front of Tipping Point - if anything there had to be a lot of work to quickly shift the media away from the Cuba/Castro headline and  to a lone nut image. 

Excellent points, Larry.

So, if Oswald was in fact in Mexico City — not to establish an image but for something else entirely — would you venture what that something else might have been?

And is your most recent, perhaps final, word on AMWORLD posted on your website?

9 hours ago, Mervyn Hagger said:

Hi Benjamin

As stated before, I am here primarily to learn since it was thanks to Gary Murr (first) and then Larry Hancock that I began to look behind the curtain in Oz (Dallas, November 22, 1963.)

Up until that point in time I was researching the development of broadcasting in both the UK and USA.

I became friends with a person in a Scandinavian country as a result of my research and resulting activism with others during the 1980s, which had been fueled by a man named Don Pierson in the tiny East Texas town of Eastland. He gave me boxes of stored legal and financial records relating to his involvement in setting up a British radio station on an US military ship and sailing it across the Atlantic during 1964, and in late 1967 it (Radio London) became the blueprint for the new BBC station called Radio 1.

Pierson's plan was to thwart the UK blockage on commercial radio and the recording industry's blockage on playing more than a limited number of recordings on the air each day. Pierson had consulted Gordon McLendon, owner of KLIF in Dallas and a hodge-podge collection of other stations. McLendon began his career with his father Bart in the movie theatre business, and then branched out into sports commentary.

McLendon created a vast recreative sports broadcasting operation which originated from the basement of an old hotel in Oak Cliff, Dallas. He was driven out of business in order to protect the financial and commercial interests of licensed sports broadcasters.

While McLendon was a Democrat, his style of politics followed on in the pattern of traditional and neo-racist (anti-Black), dogma with his form of Church+State in power. He was mirrored by Billy Graham whose home church was at First Baptist in Dallas, and whose politics shadowed those of the Murchisons who helped to finance US Senator Joe McCarthy, a Republican.

In those days the center of Texas power was in Houston where the oil men met, and the oil men ruled the USA and therefore set out to rule the world.

McLendon was a member of the advisory board of Radio Free Europe, who used the cover of the Houston Post to pretend that it was a grass-roots operation. It was in fact funded and controlled by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Radio Free Europe directed an array of transmitters towards the main body of European countries under the control of the USSR, and it directed a sister operation called Radio Liberty towards Russia.

Left out of the mix were the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

Now the reason why the 'Iron Curtain' (so-called) had descended, as Winston Churchill famously put it, is due to the secret pact between Joe Stalin and Winston Churchill who carved-up Europe for rule post-WWII. Stalin was quite shocked when Churchill crudely wrote all this down on a piece of paper. But nevertheless, two-faced Winston Churchill (promoter of the 'bad Jew' Illuminati nonsense in 1920), was not who everyone later came to think that he was.

Churchill was a two-faced rogue, just like John F. Kennedy.

About the time that the 'patsy' (Lee Harvey Oswald) was setting foot in England to somehow miraculously land him in Helsinki and then the USSR, Gordon McLendon with Clint Murchison Jr., and Robert F. Thompson (all three very wealthy and with a weird sense of humor), set up a CIA operation anchored just off the coast of Stockholm, Sweden in the Baltic, and opposite the USSR nuclear submarine operations on the opposite shore. This station was supposedly a Swedish version of KLIF playing pop music from a ship, but according to Bill Weaver who was sent by Bart McLendon to shut it down later on, it was a listening post. Hints from Weaver indicate that its listening capabilities were sonar in capability.

The Baltic Sea is landlocked, apart from the narrows between Denmark and Sweden. Every ship wanting entry to the North Sea on the other side had to pass through those narrows, and the North Sea opened into the Atlantic Ocean.

Guarding those narrows for the USA, was a nuclear submarine (one of several) that were all base in Holy Loch, Scotland using a floating USA naval base. (Other US subs guarded similar 'choke points' in other parts of the world. This base was initially negotiated by Eisenhower and passed to JFK and it resulted in a form of nuclear blackmail by the USA against the UK. Holy Loch was a deal struck on 'take it, or else'. Or 'else' referred to sharing US nuclear weapons with the UK. This was also at the same time as the famous spy debacles and defections that also led into the Christine Keeler scandal involving a Russian agent.

Now we are into the days before the Beatles burst forth in NYC to begin 'Beatlemania' in America.

The one part of the JFK assassination story that was never investigated (until my group began to do so by serendipity), was the linked story of radio broadcasting involving the USA and UK. That is where the real players and their story come to light because that story was never blocked, as such. Misdirected yes, blocked no.

It all began when Don Pierson gave me his financial and legal records in 1985 that linked to his exploits in the North Sea following McLendon's advice, and then his linked exploits in Haiti where he was walking down the path trodden by Murchison and De Mohrenschildt.

So what was in those documents that I received?

A major clue, a key to unlock everything which I did not even consider until Murr and then Hancock pointed out what Pierson had done in 1966 with yet another ship and another (and twin) offshore broadcasting operation aimed at the UK. The ship those stations was based upon was a CIA vessel assigned to Dr Manuel Aritime Buesa, and which came back to the USA and began attacking Cuba all over again.

But turning the clock back to 1964 and Radio London, Pierson's first operation sprang to life thanks to a financial master mind for the Mafia and CIA (cojoined interests), who was based in Chicago. His name is Burton Kanter.

However, connecting the story of the Beatles to the murder of JFK under the orders of Carlos Marcello when everyone else has been pointing in a million different and all totally unrelated directions, has not been easy.

I had no road map, and therefore I stumbled around in the dark for decades trying to make sense of all this.

Now I have and I have the evidence to prove that what I am claiming is the true story.

The reason why no President has ever told the truth about November 22, 1963 and declassified all of the documents, is because of the geopolitical shock waves that could result and shatter the NATO alliance and certainly the make believe "special relationship" between the USA and the UK.

That is still a ticking time bomb waiting to go off, and it was set in place due to the double-speak, two-faced misguided and warped characters called John and Robert Kennedy.

That is what I am working exposing, irrespective of the consequences that may result in the geopolitical theater of financial gamesmanship where Presidents get filthy rich because of past lies and blackmail.

There is indeed a weapon of mass destruction that could detonate, but it is not nuclear or biological, it is labeled "truth" and as Jack Nicholson wondered in 'that' movie, I too wonder if everyone who worships the very ground that the Kennedys once walked can handle it.

Ironically, put in very basic terms on this Forum, it raises the question of how David Von Pein and his devoted JFK cultists will react?

My guess is that they will never, ever accept the idea let alone the facts, that JFK and his brother RFK have hoodwinked them into believing a horror story disguised as a Hollywood fairy story called 'Camelot'.

Hopefully all of this and more will soon appear in book format.

MH: . . . in the tiny East Texas town of Eastland.  

LS: Huh? Do you mean a tiny town a little east of Abilene  in West Texas?

MH: It all began when Don Pierson gave me his financial and legal records in 1985 that linked to his exploits in the North Sea following McLendon's advice, and then his linked exploits in Haiti where he was walking down the path trodden by Murchison and De Mohrenschildt.  

LS: It all began when a colleague from Rosewood Hotel days told me to read Dick Russell's The Man Who Knew Too Much, particularly the section on the ultimate patriarch of Rosewood, H. L. Hunt prompting reflections on managing Brown Brothers Harriman board meetings at our hotel on Turtle Creek, or the evenings spent on Preston Road at the Murchison estate, or Professional Travel Service which managed the travel contracts for the national ASPG and ASPE to the Canary Islands, or seeing de Mohrenschildt with Bruce Calder as they collected our contract agent Mitzi Calder for lunch, or weekends at Brandy Brandstetter's Las Brisas.  We all have a story or two, Mervyn; the challenge is moving from tunnel vision to logic. Marcello Did It  because you met the Mayor of Eastland, in West Texas, falls into the former category.

MH: He was mirrored by Billy Graham whose home church was at First Baptist in Dallas.

LS: To be clear, Graham never lived in Dallas; he preached at First Baptist as a young minister in training, joined Criswell's* church, and never moved membership.

I recognize that your research skirts on elements behind the assassination in Dallas, but your obsession with a guy in jail in Fort Worth that day and your own personal experiences seem to have skewed your reasoning

Instead, you only see what you look for.

Motive, Means and Opportunity applies to a number of hypotheses including the most popular to date among assassination researchers: Cuba, THE C.I.A., THE Mafia a.k.a. Carlos Marcello(?),  and Vietnam.

Since you mention Billy Graham in context of McLendon, Murchison, and Joe McCarthy, let's stick with the Southern Baptist sympathies for ideological fascists of the era first — particularly as the dynamic repeats itself as we approach 2024:

By 1954, William F. Buckley, America’s up and coming voice of establishment conservatism by comparison to both [Clendenin] Ryan and ]Russell] Maguire’s extreme views, was editing the magazine, "American Mercury." During this period, Maguire also befriended the young Southern Baptist evangelist, Billy Graham, and, according to authors Yeadon and Hawkins, “Nazi Hydra in America,” Maguire gave $75,000 (three-quarters of a million dollars in 2020) to produce the film Oiltown, USA praising the virtues of free enterprise development of God-given natural resources thru the fictional Texas oilman and his religious conversion that manages to blend his born-again evangelism with unrestrained capitalism. The movie was promoted through Billy Graham’s mesmerizing influence over a vast network of Southern Baptists, thousands of whom adored Benito Mussolini, to be discussed further in Chapter 9. Graham, a member of the First Baptist Church of Dallas when Rev. William Criswell reached his zenith, continued his friendship with Maguire after producing Oiltown. Graham provided several articles for his magazine, and appeared on the cover in 1957. From 1954–58, the magazine was managed by Natasha Maguire, Maguire’s daughter with Susan Saroukhanoff Maguire who was born in Tbilisi, Russia. After fleeing the Bolshevik revolution via the Ukraine, members of the Saroukhanoff family established roots in South America. Susan’s sister later befriended the Grand Duchess Maria Pavlova, and the two women launched a branch of Elizabeth Arden in Argentina. The cosmetics firm has long been suspected as providing shelter for Nazi activity.

*The young Criswell, whose performance in the pulpit was described very early on as “a fiery exhibition, a roller coaster of whispers, bellows and shouts,” was an early pioneer of the megachurch, growing First Baptist from 5,000 members to over 25,000.  His wider influence across America was exemplified by being twice elected head of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest non-Catholic congregation in America. From those influential posts Criswell administered to what many of his critics claimed, a blindly loyal flock through a myopic and parochial lens. In the 1950s, he would serve as the spiritual mentor of a young Rev. Billy Graham who would join him to advance the Southern Baptist, ultraconservative religious thought on a global scale for another fifty years. “The Southern Baptist conservative movement,” said Barry Hankins, an historian at Baylor University and coauthor of Baptists in America: A History, “. . . in some ways comes straight out of First Baptist Dallas.”

An early opponent of forced integration, Rev. Criswell publicly criticized the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, and in 1960 vehemently opposed the Democratic presidential candidacy of John F. Kennedy, the young, attractive, and relatively broad-minded Roman Catholic who represented Massachusetts in the US Senate. As Dallas Morning News reporter Alan Peppard wrote, “John F. Kennedy was just days from securing the 1960 Democratic nomination for president when Dr. W. A. Criswell strode, bible in hand, to the carved wooden altar of the mighty First Baptist Church in Dallas. Chopping the July air with disdain, he prophesied that the election of the Catholic Kennedy would “spell the death of a free church in a free state.” 

Or, how about on a purely practical level, the Texas Tidelands Case is exemplary of "Motive, Means and Opportunity"

Haroldson Lafayette Hunt was the embodiment, and some might argue archetype, of the deadly mood in 1963 shared by the Dallas power structure on the day Kennedy was gunned down. Hunt’s suspected involvement in the assassination stemmed from his fanatical anti-integration and virulent anti-communist politics and the fact that his wealth could and did finance any number of organizations, causes, and individuals that aligned with his extreme politics, including Generals Edwin A. Walker and Charles Willoughby. We’ve learned that both men figure significantly in the Lafitte datebook and in the ledger sheets, as does the name “Rothermel,” a surname of H. L.'s confidential assistant, Paul Rothermel. According to Hunt’s former attorney, John Curington, in his book, “H. L. Hunt: Motive and Opportunity,” his boss had his own ideas about assassination teams that could be deployed at his will, designating them “kill squads,” a term used by Lafitte. 

            While other events in the days and months prior to the assassination have propelled researchers to accuse Hunt of involvement, including the alleged visit to the Hunt Oil offices by Jack Ruby, the documented fact that Jack Crichton signed on as a director of the board of the H. L. Hunt Foundation in July of that year, and whether or not Marina Oswald went to the Hunt offices in the days after the death of her husband, few have paid sufficient attention to Hunt’s true ire toward Kennedy—an ire shared in particular with oilman Clint Murchison—grounded in the new president’s position on the Texas Tidelands Case and the oil depletion allowance that could have a permanent negative impact on the bottom line of their empires. 

Expanding analysis of Motive, Means and Opportunity to the international arena:

A son-in-law, [of the French dynasty Schlumberger] Jean de Menil, took the reins and moved with his wife, Dominique Schlumberger de Menil to Houston. The de Menil name is a recognizable one, particularly significant as he was a board member of Permindex, funded Jacques Soustelle and the OAS, and occasional business partner of George de Mohrenschildt. His testimony before the Warren Commission looms in the shadows of this particular area of the investigation with interesting ties to de Mohrenschildt, whose good friend, Sam Ballen purchased a division of Schlumberger located in the Texas Panhandle. Sam and George played doubles tennis in early 1963 with Magnolia Labs chemist Everett Glover who is named in Pierre’s records, all of whom are pursued in detail in the “Lay of the Land” chapter of this book.

            Another Schlumberger brother, Maurice launched the Neuflize Schlumberger Bank which would merge with French Protestant concern, Mallet Bank in the 1960s. The Mallet family were French ancestors of a founding partner of the prestigious NY law firm, Curtis Mallet-Prevost (Prevost being a French family as well), alleged to have been involved in the plans to remove Franklin Roosevelt from office—an act that would have ensured the candidacy of Paul V. McNutt for president, with Thomas G. Proctor as his running mate. 

Permindex Continued

            By 1963, Ferenc Nagy had established an office and a residence in Dallas, Texas for reasons yet to be fully understood. Among Nagy’s benefactors was Dallas oilman Clint W. Murchison whose DC lobbyist, Bobby Baker was a key figure identified in the unfolding scandal that threatened the political future of native Texan and Kennedy’s Vice President, Lyndon B. Johnson. Johnson’s team had convinced the Kennedy team that a swing through Texas in the fall of 1963 was critical to the reelection outcome. Baker, LBJ’s faithful servant was a cofounder of DC’s Quorum Club in 1961, an environment designed to meet the needs of certain senators, congressmen, lobbyists, Capitol Hill staffers, and others well-connected, whether they were “looking for drinks, meals, poker games, or an opportunity to share secrets in private accommodations.” Baker was also a lobbyist for Dallasite Clint W. Murchison, the quintessential archetype of Texas independent oil who is well-known for having significantly enhanced the private lifestyle of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover for years. Lesser known is that Murchison was an early investor in Otto Skorzeny’s oil scheme in Spain. 

Are you arguing that Clint's history with the Mayor of Eastland Don Pierson in the North Sea actually trumps the significant of his investments with Republic National Bank's Algur Meadows and SS Otto Skorzeny in Franco's fascist Spain, particularly factoring that both men are identified in a record of the plot to assassinate President Kennedy in Dallas ... NOT New Orleans, and NOT Eastland in West Texas for that matter.

And speaking of the Profumo Affair:
For now, in light of the Ellen Rometsch scandal, which was first widely exposed by {Des Moines Register reporter Clark] Mollenhoff who was first to compare the pending scandal to the Profumo Affair, and the possibility that more than blackmail was in play, it is important to draw attention to several Lafitte entries:

NYC Rest guide ad.

Talk of Ella R. photographs

. . . in NY at Previews

—Lafitte datebook, September 17, 1963

Meet with Willoughby at

(Ella R) others at

49 East 53rd St.

NYC

—Lafitte datebook, October 15, 1963

As the reader will learn in a later chapter, Manhattan based real estate firm Previews Inc. provided Ilse Skorzeny “employment,” whether as an independent contractor, a salaried agent, or perhaps nothing but a cover for her travel in and out of the US. Among the founders of Previews were those behind the popular weekly magazine, CUE which at the time covered theatre and arts and New York’s social scene. It is yet to be determined if Ellen Rometsch’s photos were being sought for a future edition of CUE magazine, but three days later, weeks after Ella had been allegedly shunted out of the US, Lafitte was noting that Otto Skorzeny needed to be consulted regarding “Ella.” 

Ask OS

Re Ella

Cable Madrid

—Lafitte datebook, October 18, 1963

Eight days later, on October 26, the Cowles’ Des Moines Register broke the Ellen Rometsch story and on October 28, according to Laffite, comprehensive planning for the assassination ensued.

***

To underscore his understanding of just how concerned the Kennedy administration was over possibility that Ellen Rometsch might have been given a visa to return to the US to testify before Senate Republicans, Sy Hersh writes: “With Lyndon Johnson on his way out, Jack Kennedy had every reason to look forward to the 1964 campaign and his reelection. There was some talk from inside the family of having a Kennedy-Kennedy ticket in 1964 . . . The only trouble spot, besides the growing difficulties in South Vietnam, was Ellen Rometsch [emphasis added] and her desire—as [FBI Director] Hoover told Kennedy over lunch . . . of returning to the United States to marry Senate investigator (LaVern Duffy). The initial Kennedy payments to Rometsch hadn’t done the trick, and now a way had to be found to keep her in West Germany—and happy to keep quiet.”

. . . As postscript, Bobby Baker’s own words sum up his control over the women who worked at the Quorum Club in D.C., including Ella Rometsch. Sy Hersh’s expanded version of how President Kennedy stumbled upon Rometsch in the first place provides critical insight. Writes Hersh, Ellen was introduced to Kennedy “in the usual way, through one of his many procurers in Washington, this time Bill Thompson, the railroad executive . . .” Hersh reveals that “Baker told him he had been approached by Thompson in the Quorum Club and asked, ‘who is that good-looking girl? That woman looks like Elizabeth Taylor.’ Baker responded, ‘She's a German, and her husband is a sergeant who works for the German Embassy. And she's a real pro as far as I'm concerned. I mean, everybody who has had a date with her has really enjoyed her company.’ So Thompson asked, ‘Bakes, do you think that if I invited her to the White House that she would go with me to meet President Kennedy?’ Baker responded [incorporating a reference to Nazis that seems incongruous if she was an East German spy for the Soviet Union],‘Gee, she's a Nazi. She'll do anything I tell her.’”

 

9 hours ago, Mervyn Hagger said:

Your curiosity is misplaced regarding Murchison and JFK.

Clint, Three Ships and the Mayor of Eastland?  I think not.

25 minutes ago, Mervyn Hagger said:

I mostly tucked my shirt in.

I'm curious that of the significant reasons to argue Clint Murchison influenced the plot to kill JFK in Dallas, why you homed in on Pierson? 

2 hours ago, Mervyn Hagger said:

No

Ever hang out at the NFL in Turtle Creek Village?  Did you meet Nick, Clint's butler from No. Ireland?