Leslie Sharp
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Joannides & Lafitte in New Orleans, 1963
Over fifteen years ago, while beginning to research a book on the odd death of U.S. Army biochemist, Dr. Frank R. Olson, I became aware of the existence of an enigmatic character with the unlikely name Jean Pierre Lafitte. The origins of my awareness came from my perusal of the 1952 and 1953 diaries of Federal Bureau of Narcotics official George Hunter White; a September 20, 1977 article in the New York Times by investigative journalists John M. Crewdson and Jo Thomas; and the private notes and correspondence of James R. Phelan, an investigative journalist and writer, who, in the 1950s through the 1960s, was quite close to both Lafitte and White. . . .
While writing my book on Olson’s murder, A TERRIBLE MISTAKE: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA’s Secret Cold War Experiments [Trine Day, 2009], of which Lafitte played an integral and deadly role, I could not avoid learning about a number of provocative connections between Monsieur Lafitte and Lee Harvey Oswald and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Not the least of these connections was that Lafitte, using an assumed named, throughout the 1960s lived in New Orleans. Indeed, in an incident that caused a flap at CIA headquarters in December 1969, the FBI arrested Lafitte in New Orleans. Briefly detained, he was released after a number of discrete phone calls from Capitol Hill were made to FBI headquarters. At the time of his arrest, Lafitte worked as the head chef at the Plimsoll Club, then part of the International Trade Mart.
Portions of Lafitte’s date books for his New Orleans years are revealing of his dealings with various CIA officials, including at least 3 apparent meetings with CIA Western Hemisphere Division employee, George Efythron Joannides. Interestingly, Lafitte’s second encounter with Joannides occurred the second week of August 1963, just days after Lee Harvey Oswald’s Friday, August 9 arrest for provoking a disturbance through leafleting for his Fair Play for Cuba Committee New Orleans chapter. Lafitte’s handwritten notations for Friday, August 16, 1963 read: “… at Antoines room— Martello, Joanides [sic] & Labadie. Quigly [sic] interview Oswald over street demonstration. Call Holdout.” Another notation, made 6 days later reads: “Talk Joanides [sic] Cuba—refers to K Organization in Mexico— similar setup now. [D]iscuss with King, ask George and Charles about Havana, Mexico trips…”
NOTES: “Antoines room” is thought to be Antoine’s, a well-known New Orleans restaurant that hosted meetings and gatherings in a number of private rooms. There are several references to Antoine’s in the date books. “Martello” appears to be a reference to New Orleans Police Department officer, Lt. Francis L. Martello; not to be confused with Francis “Monk” Martello. Lt. Martello interviewed Oswald in the New Orleans lockup on August 10, 1963. “Quigly” is perhaps a misspelling of the name Quigley. FBI SA John L. Quigley also interviewed Oswald in New Orleans jail. “Labadie” is a known alias, as in Jean Labadie, that Lafitte used often in New York City, but it is also the surname of Stephen J. Labadie, a special agent for the FBI. “Holdout” is unknown; perhaps it is a code-name for a program or confidential informer. “King” is most likely J.C. King, CIA Western Hemisphere director, but could possibly be William Harvey, as some CIA associated people occasionally and mockingly referred to Harvey as “King.” “George and Charlie” are believed to be FBN officials.
Copyright © 2013—H.P. Albarelli Jr.
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Further to the significance of the John Birch Society in the lead up to the assassination in Dallas . . .
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 John Birch Society in the chapter, “Lay of the Land,” to further understand the width and breadth of influence of Aginter Press and similar fascist organizations.
It is interesting to note that on March 5, 1964, French intelligence had inquired of the Bureau in NYC whether Jean Rene Souetre, a.k.a. Michel Mertz, a.k.a. Michel Roux had been expelled from Dallas-Fort Worth area forty-eight hours after the assassination; and a reminder that on March 7, 1964, Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations leader Jaroslav Stetzko wrote to his personal friend General Edwin Walker, requesting he provide Moise Tschombe an invitation to visit the US.
General Edwin Walker's ties to the John Birch Society:
According to a Louisiana State Police document, on November 20, 1963, General Edwin Walker met with some thirty-five conservative business leaders at the Hotel Jung, and again on the 21st, he was meeting with another ninety people at the Jung. Two years prior to these meetings, President John Kennedy had encouraged Walker to resign from his leadership role when in 1961, he violated his military oath by distributing political literature produced by the John Birch Society. That literature promoted accusations that his commander-in-chief was a traitor.
In his 1963 datebook, the project manager records the word “caretaker” on seven separate occasions. Initially, the logical candidate seemed to be George de Mohrenschildt, widely referred to as the “handler” of LHO. De Mohrenschildt and his wife Jeanne were in Dallas through March 1963, prior to departing for a stopover in Washington D.C. before an extended stay in Haiti and surrounding islands, so it might seem pointless to pursue caretaker any further than the Russian-born oil exploration consultant with a known history of intelligence service to the highest bidder. However, because Lafitte resumed focus on caretaker in the fall, as evidenced in his datebook—when we know from official records and testimony that George and Jeanne spent the last half of 1963 concentrating on suspect business deals in the West Indies—we returned to the datebook to follow the path of caretaker with more diligence.
The first mention is on March 7, just days after Lee Oswald was introduced to Ruth Hyde Paine in the home of Socony Mobil Oil chemist Everett Glover. Everett had known both Ruth and her estranged husband, Michael, through Madrigal choir practices and performances, a passion shared with Hungarian-born Fr. Ralph March, who cofounded Our Lady of Dallas, the Cistercian Abby located in Irving, Texas. Fr. March also served on the faculty of the University of Dallas, located on the campus of the Abby, during the tenure of President Robert Morris, the head of the regional chapter of the ultraconservative John Birch Society (JBS), and legal counsel to General Edwin A. Walker. (Morris’s history has been pursued in depth earlier in this book.) Michael Paine testified that out of curiosity, he attended a John Birch meeting in October at the invitation of a JBS advocate who was part of the Madrigal choir. . .
During testimony, Michael Paine stated that the John Birch Society meeting he attended with another friend from Madrigal choir practices was held the same evening of the infamous incident with Adlai Stevenson when he was spat upon in Dallas. Paine speculates that it was sometime in November. However, Wesley Liebeler, commission attorney, sets the record straight when he said, For the record I think the record should indicate that Mr. Stevenson was in Dallas on or about October 24, 1963. It was in fact October 24.
The full context of the exchange is worth considering:
Mr. LIEBELER - Are you a member or have you ever attended any meetings of the John Birch Society?
Mr. PAINE - I am not a member. I have been to one or, I guess chiefly one meeting of theirs.
Mr. LIEBELER - Where was that?
Mr. PAINE - That was in Dallas?
Mr. LIEBELER - When?
Mr. PAINE - That was the night Stevenson spoke in Dallas.
The CHAIRMAN - When?
Mr. PAINE - The night Stevenson spoke in Dallas, U.N. Day.
Representative FORD - Was that 1963?
Mr. PAINE - Yes,
Mr. LIEBELER - Would you tell us the circumstances of your attendance at that meeting and what happened?
Mr. PAINE - I had been seeking to go to a Birch meeting for some time, and then I was invited on this night so I went. It was an introductory meeting.
Mr. DULLES - On the 9th of November?
Mr. PAINE - It was November something, I don't know what, a Wednesday or Thursday night.
Mr. LIEBELER - For the record I think the record should indicate that Mr. Stevenson was in Dallas on or about October 24, 1963.
Liebler asks Michael a few more questions and then commission member Dulles, the former Director of the CIA, made a point of interjecting:
Mr. DULLES - May I ask, did you go out of curiosity rather than sympathy or rather how did you happen to go?
Mr. PAINE - I am not in sympathy.
Mr. DULLES - So I gathered.
And with that, Dulles relieved Paine of any taint of animosity toward John Kennedy.
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5 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:
Not to digress, but as you mention Fred Koch, his Matador ranch purchased in 1952, originally established by a Scottish consortium, is for sale. BTW the town of Matador was hit hard by a tornado 2-3 weeks ago, I think 3 died. Some rough country around there.
I can't resist.
The incident occurred in White Deer, around 40 miles northeast of Amarillo.
https://www.rawstory.com/donald-trump-news-2663415969/ -
3 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:
Well, Leslie, I need to read your book.
Honestly, I have hesitated to buy Coup in Dallas, because of the questions swirling around about the authenticity of the Lafitte datebook, but this is interesting historical material in its own right.
Also, it sounds like you have had direct experience with some of these institutions in the Dallas area.
(cont. Chapter 9, Coup in Dallas)
"Lay of the Land . . . Lay of the Land, Dallas"
. . . This chapter will explain that of all American cities, including Miami, Tampa, or Chicago, Dallas had “everything going for it”: a right-wing Republican climate that considered Kennedy an anathema to its political goals; a social and religious community that embraced segregation and recoiled at the suggestion that a Roman Catholic could navigate the delicate balance between church and state; a law enforcement apparatus with allegiance to the city’s ultraconservative political agenda; a crime syndicate that manipulated both sides of that law; and a thriving corporate and financial cabal operating in symbiosis with the oil industry and military contractors all of whom aligned far more with the ideologies of fascist regimes than with democracies. Adding to the assertion is a Lafitte note, “Rene says oil smooths the way to silent, and sometimes deadly, change.” Above all, as Renee told the author, Dallas was the “arms and legs of the CIA,” a truth borne out.***
Some of the best and brightest investigators and authors in the decades following the assassination have wrestled with an effective structure to employ when disseminating the fruits of their research. The challenge with this chapter was to present the matrix of dates, players, locations and events directly relating to Dallas in a fashion that a less knowledgeable reader could readily follow, while holding the attention of the experts—some of whom will be cynical, some not.
. . . The result was a collage. Similarly, this chapter focused on Dallas has been recorded from multiple vantage points to determine which “camera angles'' capture the clearest resolution of the crime that took place there. The resulting collage consists of key individuals and their networks—overt as well as clandestine—set in specific locations and intertwined in service to ideologically driven motives, all of which were essential to the success and subsequent cover-up of the plot to kill Kennedy.
[After months of deliberation with Hank over the structure of Chapter 9],It was determined that physical locations in Dallas, five specifically, would provide the best scaffolding: the Republic National Bank building; the Meadows Building; 3707 Rawlins St. in Oak Lawn; the University of Dallas; and the Texas School Book Depository at 411 Elm.
The organization of the chapter also required frequent reference to members of the boards of directors of pertinent corporations and financial concerns. On the surface, the excruciating detail may seem to lack relevance; however, when considered in context it reveals what the conservative dominated media of the day chose not to reveal—that capitalism at its most toxic in Dallas was controlled by a tight knit, interwoven cabal acting on behalf of mutual self-interests and, in their view, the best interests of America. . . .
Tenants of Republic National Bank Building [including Dresser Industries presented in a preceding comment on this EF thread]
Not only was 300 N. Ervay home to the financial institution that was Republic National Bank and Howard Corp. frequently operating in concert with Empire Trust of NYC, but a significant number of other placeholders within the military/industrial/intelligence apparatus benefited from access and security provided within the building’s environment.
We turn now to four of those major tenants that relate directly or were positioned closely on the periphery of the plot to assassinate President John Kennedy: Schlumberger Oil Services; Lone Star Steel (which on the surface provided the essential commodity for the military during WWII, Korea and Vietnam, but played a far more intriguing role); Ling Temco Vought (LTV) (the aerospace concern that served as precursor to today’s mega military contractor L3 Technologies); and Neil Mallon’s Dresser Industries (which serviced the petroleum industry on an international scale). Each of these contractors were locked in a symbiosis with the military-intelligence apparatus, reliant on the military for profits and dependent on intelligence for security.
Schlumberger Oil Well Services
In Chapter 5, “Jacks of All Trades,” we learned that soldier of fortune Thomas Eli Davis, Jr. married into a family with direct personal and business ties to Schlumberger. We consider now further implications of the family-dominated worldwide oil services company whose headquarters had been relocated during the war from France to Houston, Texas. The move was made at the behest of Jean de Menil, the son-in-law of one of the two Schlumberger founders. As mentioned, when de Menil shopped for the ideal location of his Dallas office, he chose the Republic National Bank building. Counsel to Schlumberger, Leon Jaworski followed close behind.
Schlumberger origins extend to the turn of the 20th century when Conrad Francois and his brother Marcel, two of six Schlumberger children of an affluent Alsatian Protestant family received their degrees in engineering in Paris. They soon founded the oil field exploration company, Schlumberger Well Surveying Corporation, which was relocated to Houston at the outset of WWII. Another Schlumberger brother, Maurice, launched the Neuflize Schlumberger Bank which would merge with Mallet Bank, a French Protestant concern, in the early ’60s.
The Mallet name may be familiar to some as a member of the Mallet-Prevost family who surfaced in the allegations that industrialists in league with certain military officers attempted to remove President Franklin D. Roosevelt in an overthrow of the US Government in 1933 in order to install a fascist-style regime. [note to@Robert Montenegro]
A student in Paris, Jean de Menil, descended from French Barons from the time of Bonaparte, met and married Conrad’s lovely daughter, Dominique, both now infamous among America’s most committed patrons of the arts, and for the extraordinary collection they amassed. Prior to assuming the helm of Schlumberger Overseas in the Middle and Far East, and Schlumberger Surenco S.A., de Menil was vice president of Banque Nationale pour le Commerce et l’Industrie in Paris. By 1963, the elegant couple had become a fixture in the American art world, but it is Jean’s vast network of friends and colleagues in the world of oil and gas that interests us.Jean de Menil’s Good Friend Paul Raigorodsky
In 1952, Raigorodsky, as president of Petroleum Engineering, Inc. and partner of the Clairborne Gasoline Co. was handpicked by the deputy to the United States Special Representative in Europe, (Ret.) Major General Fred L. Anderson to be Senior Civilian director to oversee oil production for defense in Europe. “We use the word defense—not war,'' said Raigorodsky at the time of his appointment, shortly after he was given a top-secret office in Paris, France at 32 Avenue d’Iena. Prior to going to Paris, Paul had lived in Texas “off and on” since 1921. Born in Russia in 1898, he arrived in the US from Kiev around 1920 and soon met and married a native of New Orleans, Ethel McCaleb, a student at University of Texas and daughter of a San Antonio banker who served on the Federal Reserve. The couple had two children and divorced before the US entered the war.
Fast forward to 1964, due to his vast network of friends within the White Russian community and the heady air he breathed in the petroleum world, Ragairodsky was called to testify before the Warren Commission. Raigorodsky identified one of Houston’s most esteemed businessmen and philanthropists, Jean de Menil as a “very close friend of mine, the financial head of Schlumberger Co.” His testimony continued to reveal that another friendship, that of roving petroleum “expert,” George de Mohrenschildt led to discussions with Jean de Menil about a proposed scheme in Haiti.
Was Tom Davis’s charade in July 1963 intended to disguise actual recruitment for planned invasion of Haiti, or elsewhere in the region? Was his wife Carolyn Hawley a conduit between the Schlumberger family and Tom, her malleable husband from Texas?
Raigorodsky told WC lead counsel Albert Jenner, “when I wouldn't go with George in the deal, he asked me to give him any suggestion as to who may be interested, so I suggested John De Menil because the Schlumberger Co. is a worldwide organization and they deal with every country in the world—you know what I am trying to say?” Eventually de Menil decided to forego the opportunity, citing the somewhat weak business pitch by de Mohrenschildt.
Raigorodsky’s friend de Mohrenschildt would from time to time use the attorney services of one Herbert Itkin, a fact detailed in a previous chapter which described activities in both Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
Relevant to this investigation, the name Itkin appears in the Lafitte datebook on both October 26 and October 27, 1963. The entry of the 27th includes the name Gali Sherbatov in the October 27th entry, initials L. O. ‘Orlov’ and ‘Harvey’.
The critical entries fall within the time period of Jack Crichton’s resurfacing from Romania, [note to @Robert Montenegro] Allen Dulles’s presentation before the Dallas Council on World Affairs, and the forthcoming “Lancelot Planning” of the 28th and 29th. It should also be recalled that CIA’s assassination chief William King Harvey was known from his earliest days with the FBI as a “Red-hunter.”
The previous Thursday, October 24, for a reason yet to be determined, two Dallas residents who were employees of Socony Mobil Oil Company, Everett Glover and Volkmar Schmidt, appear in Lafitte’s datebook. The note reads simply, “Glover Volkmar K.C. Stanley”. [K.C. Stanley appears in George de Mohrenschildt's address book.] Both Glover and Volkmar will be pursued in the fifth and final location, 411 Elm—Texas School Book Depository.
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Author and assassination researcher Bill Simpich writes, “by May 1963, [Herbert] Itkin became the attorney for the Haitian government-in-exile. CIA documents show that Itkin's handler in 1963 was Mario Brod, who was recruited in Italy by James Angleton during World War II and had operational involvement in Haiti. Before his brother was killed, Bobby Kennedy himself was relying on mob tips from Itkin. In 1966, Itkin was reportedly researching under his code name ‘Portio,’ while Angleton held onto his private ‘Mike/Portio/Haiti’ file. In 1968, CIRA (CI research and analysis chief) Ray Rocca swore that the ‘CI Staff definitely never was in contact’ with Itkin. By 1971, CIRA's bird-dog investigator Paul Hartman was asking to review Itkin's CIA file, no doubt to educate himself on some fine points.”
It is worth repeating the two entries:
October 26th
W team E Johnson’s
(Itkin)
October 27th
Gali Sherbatov-L.O.
(Orlov)
(Itkin)
- Harvey-
Paul Raigorodsky told the Warren Commission: “Now, I don't know it for a fact, but except as I was told by Father Royster that the Oswalds came through Fort Worth originally. Now, this is hearsay—that I believe they got acquainted with the people by the name of Clark, in reference to Gali’s married name.”
Mr. JENNER. Max Clark?
Mr. RAIGORODSKY. I mean, that's all hearsay—I do not know it for a fact. While she is a Russian, in fact she is a first cousin of a very close friend of mine, Prince Scherbatoff, who lives in New York and lives in Jamaica. That's where I see him occasionally. Now, it is my understanding that the Clarks told some of their friends—again, this is hearsay, that "Here is a Russian married to an American and they don't even have milk for the babies.”
Raigorodsky’s good friend George de Mohrenschildt also named Gali Clark in his Warren Commission testimony:
Mr. JENNER. All right. Now, when did you first meet either Marina—I will put it this way: When did you first hear--
Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. The first time--
Mr. JENNER. Of either of these people—Marina Oswald or Lee Harvey Oswald?
Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. As far as I remember, George Bouhe, who is a close friend of mine, and a very curious individual, told me that there is an interesting couple in Fort Worth, and that the Clarks know them already—Max. Clark and Gali—they know them already. Somebody read about them in the paper—I don't know exactly, I don't remember the exact wording anymore that somebody read about them in the paper, maybe Mr. Gregory, and discovered them, made a discovery.
According to her obituary, “Gali Clark was born in France in October 1922. She was the daughter of Prince and Princess Mikhail Mikhaïlovitch Scherbatoff, exiled from Russia after the 1917 Revolution. Her father's portrait hangs in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. She met her husband, Max E. Clark, in Nice, France, during World War II. He was a pilot in the US Army. They were married in 1945 at the Orthodox Russian church in Nice, France, and after the war, they came to live in Fort Worth, where Max E. Clark was a lawyer.”
Clark’s clients included military contractor General Dynamics with a primary plant located in Fort Worth overseen by the President of GD, Frank Pace. We remind the reader of the brewing scandal during the months leading to the assassination, involving government contracts for the TFX F-111 fighter plane produced by General Dynamics in Fort Worth, and Bobby Baker who traveled with his girlfriend, Nancy Carol Tyler as well as Ella Rometsch, from New Orleans to Dallas at the height of the scandal.
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We conclude the assessment of the October 27th datebook entry by first surmising that Harvey can only mean William King “Bill” Harvey who surfaces on numerous dates in the Lafitte material. Bill Harvey has been covered sufficiently in this book, so it is only necessary to highlight his presence in context of Gali Sherbatov and Itkin and Orlov.
As noted previously, “Orlov” is clear reference to fellow Fort Worth citizen, Col. Lawrence Orlov, a veteran of the Air Force as well as a good friend of J. Walton Moore.
Ragairodsky’s testimony that confirmed his wide range of associations with intriguing characters, from Jean de Menil, to George de Mohrenschildt, to Gali Scherbatoff pulls us toward a deeper grasp of the milieu.
The Significance of the Tolstoy Foundation
Paul Raigorodsky counted among his close friends AF Col. Herschel V. Williams, an ad man, Hollywood screenwriter, and real estate executive who worked alongside Mrs. Otto (Ilse) Skorzeny at the global real estate concern, Previews Inc. After the war, while employed by Previews, Williams joined the board of the Tolstoy Foundation along with Russian-born Raigorodsky, and Schlumberger’s Jean de Menil.
The Tolstoy Foundation, according to their official history, was established to respond to the needs of the Russian refugees of World War II who for various reasons were handicapped in providing for themselves and to create a center for Russian culture in America to serve the American born generation of Russian descent. Cofounded by Russian American Igor Sikorsky, aviation pioneer and creator of the Sikorsky helicopter, the foundation was confronted with the serious issue of repatriation by early February 1945. They made the decision to take on the task of bringing these refugees to Canada and the US “They arrived by boat or plane and their expenses were initially paid by the International Relief Organization (IRO). In 1946, the Tolstoy Foundation initiated a subcommittee of the American Council of Voluntary Agencies for Foreign Service under the name of the United Relief Committee in Aid to ‘Displaced Persons of Central and East European Origin.’” It was through this subcommittee that Estonian born Ilya Mamantov and his wife Alexandria entered the US only to find themselves two decades later as central characters in the drama that unfolded on the weekend of November 22, 1963 in Dallas.
Sikorsky served as chairman of Tolstoy when he was nominated to the board of the Connecticut National Bank, Bridgeport, founded by the in-laws of Thomas Eli Davis, Jr. Bridgeport, “America’s arsenal” was also home of de Menil’s Schlumberger Research Center.
Col. Williams’ and Paul Raigorodsky’s mutual interest in the Tolstoy Foundation suggests a certain degree of commonality between Williams, his employer Previews Inc., and the staunch conservative, anti-communist movement in Dallas with Raigorodsky as its semiofficial representative; and certainly, there is a strong likelihood that Ilya Mamantov, who spoke openly and frequently against “The Reds,” was at least familiar with Col. Williams. However, far more intriguing is the fact that while serving in military intelligence during the war, Col. Williams reported to Dallas’s own, Col. Robert G. Storey, Jr., a man who needs no further introduction but the significance of the history between these two men cannot be overstated.
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1 minute ago, W. Niederhut said:
Leslie,
Where did you find this chapter about Dresser Industries?
I wrote it. Let me know if you identify errors.
Dallas chapter of Coup in Dallas.
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Just now, Ron Bulman said:
Not to digress, but as you mention Fred Koch, his Matador ranch purchased in 1952, originally established by a Scottish consortium, is for sale. BTW the town of Matador was hit hard by a tornado 2-3 weeks ago, I think 3 died.
Yes, heavy Scottish influence in the Panhandle. Adair was North of Ireland, non-Catholic.
Tornados were/are brutal in the region. My first was the aftermath of Silverton c. 1956 I believe. The Middleton family were friends of my father; in fact I think they were distant relatives. -
On 8/5/2023 at 10:31 PM, Ron Bulman said:
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- Members
- Location:75 Mi. S/W of Fort Worth
- Interests:Football, searching for Truth in JFKA & RFKA, grandkids.
ExpandI've tracked the Vanderbilt angle because an heiress married Northern Ireland investor John Adair and together they established the JA Ranch with Charles Goodnight in the Palo Duro Canyon located in the Texas Panhandle. Amarillo, as you know, was HQ for Crichton's Dorchester, with Byrd on the board... An heir to the JA married into the Symington family — Stuart Symington first Sec. Air Force and partner with Clark Clifford during the BCCI debacle.
Fascinating! Do you know to what degree the Adairs might have crossed paths with Crichton down in Amarillo? I'm thinking about Crichton's latter day Arabian Shield company, which if memory serves correctly was actually formed through Dorchester. One of the investors at one point into Arabian Shield was Kamal Adham, the Saudi intelligence chief who was in turn a major stockholder in BCCI.
Not to digress from the datebook but this threw me for a loop. Seeing Charles Goodnight in a post about the JFKA made me stop and think, huh? I fully understand it in the context of the two above comments after reading them. But first seeing Goodnight's name did stun me, which led to chuckles as I read on about the connections, as Ed said, fascinating.
I have J Evetts Haley's book on Goodnight. I've been to his replicated dug out in Palo Duro Canyon as well as his home, the historical center.
Goodnight was my G-G-G Grandfathers close neighbor (two listings away) on the 1860 Palo Pinto County census. That year he was one of 96 volunteer rangers, for which Goodnight was a scout, which participated in the capture of Cyntia Ann Parker. The basis of John Wayne's The Searchers.
I just discovered personally this historical jewel myself a couple of weeks ago, courtesy of a Dublin, Tx library DVD. From 107 years ago. Film in it's infancy, for Dr. Joseph Mc Bride.
Ron, You probably know that this region was settled by fiercely independent characters — Charles Goodnight being among the fiercest— who over the decades eschewed federal government and any regulations of their exploitation of natural resources.
The patriarch of the Koch dynasty made his initial fortune east of the Cap Rock, and as you know, was a founding member of the John Birch Society which thrived in the Panhandle in the early 1960s.
I may be repeating myself, but among the founding members of JBS — sitting at the table with Koch Sr. — was First National of Boston, R. W. Stoddard; FNB board at the time included Francis Kernan of White Weld private banking who handled the United Fruit account along with descendants of the Boston Brahmin Cabot family - co-founders with Minor Cooper Keith of UF.
Kernan, whose brother James was consigliere to Jock Whitney of the Whitney-Vanderbilt Dynasty, represented the interests of Vanderbilt-Adair in the Texas panhandle; UF in its infinite wisdom succeeded in depleting the Ogala Aquifer putting hundreds of independent farmers out of business by the 1970s.
Kernan was also banker to Helmerich-Payne Oil of Tulsa Oklahoma with direct business ties to and interlocking boards with a young oilman in Midland/Odessa, George Herbert Walker Bush.
In 1963, GHWBush, running for the Senate, shared the Republican ticket with gubernatorial candidate Jack Crichton of Dorchester GAs with headquarters in Amarillo, Texas. At the time, Crichton had rejoined the Al Meadows consortium in a new scheme based in Houston; records indicate Otto Skorzeny renewed keen interest in Meadows' efforts having partnered with Meadows - the chairman of Gerneal American oil in the early 1950s from his base in Madrid that involved Crichton, Bush's good friend from Tyler Joe Zeppa, et al. Is it reasonable to believe that George Bush was unfamiliar with the Skorzeny history? -
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On 8/8/2023 at 12:38 PM, Evan Marshall said:
Reading the book for the 3rd and STILL don't find it credible. I've got to get back to the 3 books I'm writing. Nothing to do with JFK as I'm convinced I've solved it to my satisfaction. Good luck on your efforts.
I'm curious why you are compelled to revisit the Askins-related threads, Evan. Perhaps when you take a break from those 3 books, you might share your personal encounters with him?
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2 minutes ago, Mervyn Hagger said:
Not at the moment because I don't have time due to the fact that I am working on a trilogy of books with timetables for completion. But I can explain how I am approaching this subject.
My interest is in the story of certain ships that became entangled with the JFK story, due to the people involved.
Now that I have satisfied myself that Marcello is probably the number one suspect in masterminding the murder of JFK, and he engaged with others either supporting his actions, or contriving misdirection, I can now follow links to people like de Mohrenschildt; Pierson; Airtime; McLendon; Murchison, etc., and tie them to a body of research connected to the record industry and groups such as the Beatles.
That research traces the history of 'border blasters' from Fort Worth at the dawn of broadcasting; to Mexico and from there to France before WWII.
It is also entangled with the story of the Italian Mafia and Jewish organized crime families, so the research I am engaged upon obviously had to address the CIA's involvement of the Mafia in the murder of JFK. The CIA is an outgrowth of the OSS and Winston Churchill's clandestine broadcasting world strapped to the SOE. Many have heard of 'Ultra' but they have never heard of Sefton Delmer and WWII psywars. But pyswars became the methodology employed in Miami during the lead-in the murder of JFK. His death interrupted a plan in progress. It did not assist that plan, it interrupted that plan and the misdirection that followed just confused the real storyline.
Over the years I have personally encountered people like ex-CIA director Colby in his dealings with Don Pierson over an aborted freeport in Haiti. This was during the same time period that de Mohrenschildt and Clint Murchison also got involved with Haiti. So it is a very complicated and tangled mess that I have to work through in order to follow the real storyline and not get led into a misdirection.
Our story has emerged very slowly since about 1980 when I first met Don Pierson with my two colleagues, and off and on since then we have been working on research without knowing what the core of the story should be. Now we know.
The main body of our research is about the practical application of communication law in both the UK and USA and all of the key people who created the world of broadcasting - which now appears to be on the cusp of extinction. It is being replaced by entirely new means of electronic communication. I would not be surprised if AI and holograms are combined to create a Brave New World that will be as different as the world was before cars and planes.
So the story we are working on has a beginning and it has an end, and the end of drafting the first manuscript is now in sight.
I am here because people like Larry Hancock are here, and our library of books includes works by him due to the pointers that he has been able to provide - without necessarily knowing that he was doing so. Larry is not alone in helping our project, and tonight I learned from Larry that he obtained some of his information from a person who has also been very helpful to us. In fact, it was that person who really set the ball rolling for us to take a look at the murder of JFK.
Good luck, Mervyn & Co.
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Dick Russell writes in the Foreword to Coup in Dallas:
. . . Here established beyond doubt is that the real perpetrators needed a fall guy to take the rap as a lone, Left-leaning gunman. The set-up of Lee Harvey Oswald began many months before, carefully orchestrated by a cabal of evil geniuses in espionage. One of these was James Angleton, then chief of CIA Counterintelligence. Another was Charles Willoughby, who formerly served as spymaster for General Douglas MacArthur. A third was Otto Skorzeny, Hitler’s favorite commando, aided by the US to establish a postwar domicile in Franco’s Spain, where he created secret camps to train assassins.
In implicating Willoughby (whose possible role was first raised in my book The Man Who Knew Too Much), French hitman Jean Rene Souetre, soldier-of-fortune Thomas Eli Davis, Jr., and oil industrialist Jack Crichton, Coup in Dallas opens wider doors to which researchers have been seeking keys for years.
. . . Albarelli’s book also adds corroboration to my own work as an investigative journalist, including knowledge imparted to me by double agent Richard Case Nagell. While Nagell is not named in the datebook, it provides substantiation for his stressing Mexico City’s Hotel Luma as a planning site and offers up the name of a Willoughby associate (Jack Canon) who Nagell had hinted was among several shooters in Dealey Plaza.
Coup in Dallas examines other layers of intrigue: the utilization by the conspirators of an East German call girl (Ellen Rometsch) in an effort to compromise JFK, and the alleged suicides of Washington Post publisher Philip Graham and Kennedy confidante Grant Stockdale.
Readers should not expect that Coup in Dallas means “case closed.” By design of Lafitte, himself very much part of the plot, his entries are thin on detail and sometimes confined to initials. Doubtless, analysis of their content will occupy researchers in search of the truth for the next fifty years. But the clues are numerous, and sometimes explicit—for example, this chilling notation two weeks before the assassination: “On the wings of murder. The pigeon way for unsuspecting Lee. Clip, clip his wings.”
@Jonathan Cohen -
7 minutes ago, David Josephs said:
Doug... say it isn't so my man.
I understand those who have a limited grasp of the information available being overly skeptical... but you know better than that Doug. You of all people know how difficult bringing forward evidence of this nature is - and I wonder for what possible gain, and to whom?
I keep a healthy amount of skepticism, yet am finding the timing of the notes and the timing of events that seemed unrelated before when seen from a different POV, make a different kind of sense.If it is i
And what is the conclusion of the "forgery" ? Angleton, Barnes, W. Harvey (and many others directly related to ZR/RIFLE) - who we have suspected all along as being part of the Facilitators - are being shown in that very light.
And you can't buy that? Men connected via the trials of war and espionage who now sit atop one of the most powerful and clandestine apparatuses the world has known... and a young playboy president betraying their country to the Russians so that we and the communists can continue to "breathe the same air".
Is it truly that hard to accept that the Mil Ind Complex has its protectorate? That issues on the global stage are much more complicated than "getting out of Vietnam"? and the deepest and longest embracing of hatred after religion is ideology based - how to control the hearts and minds of the masses for "our" own ends.
We KNOW Oswald didn't do it
We KNOW the military enabled the post assassination cover-up with the SS, FBI, CIA & INS
We KNOW the CIA, Cubans, Mafia, Chi-comms, etc are cover narratives after the "Oswald did it" narrative is stripped away
We KNOW there are powerful forces in this world which were even more empowered during the early 60'sI remain at a loss for why intelligent people cannot embrace what may be a roadmap to the very people we've suspected - with names of those never before considered - and the connections leading to a resolution.
When do we stop spending time showing Oswald didn't do it and start spending time looking into the evidence that may lead us to who did?
The Albarelli, Sharp, Kent mantra:
When do we stop spending time showing Oswald didn't do it and start spending time looking into the evidence that may lead us to who did? -
1 hour ago, Jonathan Cohen said:
I have. And the majority of reviews from actual students of the case find the book to not be credible.
Do you mean Doudna and Litwin? Or perhaps Koch? None of whom to my knowledge read Coup prior to issuing a public review.
Or do you mean Quinlan, Shaw, Storper, Montenegro, et al? Or Dick Russell's Foreword and limited analysis of the datebook?
How long have you been a "student" of the assassination, @Jonathan Cohen? I've yet to read a comment of yours that offers up original research or insight into events in Dallas. -
5 hours ago, Jonathan Cohen said:
Uh-huh. That must be why hardly any serious student of the Kennedy assassination believes your conclusions.
Why don't you visit the reviews and the cover blurbs; get back to me when you have.
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12 hours ago, Mervyn Hagger said:
Leslie, my interest in this subject is essentially the same as Larry Hancock as outlined in the cover jacket of his book 'Someone Would Have Talked'. Larry has taken a court room approach to evidence, and so have I. That does not mean that he knows what I know, or that I know what he knows, but like prosecutors entering a courtroom, I believe that we both have something to contribute to the case file.
The case file for the 'instant act' is dated November 22, 1963, and the 'instant act' is identified as the murder of JFK.
In a courtroom a judge will allow pretrial motions to be heard to speed-up the trial itself, and in Texas courtrooms it is not unusual for Motions In Limine to be heard in order to either include or exclude evidence that is considered to be prejudicial to the case.
My statement referred to the person having most to gain from the 'instant act' and the question of whether he caused the 'instant act'.
Why he did this and how he did this are different matters entirely and would have to be treated separately. They could be brought in to support a motive for the 'instant act', but a motive is not always necessary to convict, anymore than it is always necessary to produce the corpse of a victim to convict someone for murder. It just makes conviction more difficult.
When I made my statement I looked for the one person who had a clear-cut motive and the means (money and contacts) to get the job done, and, the means to silence anyone who dared to talk about the 'instant act'. That all focused upon one person at one location.
However, what I am following, which you correctly observed in your initial comment to me, are the movements of a couple of ships, one of which did indeed become used for the genuine 'Radio Caroline South' of 1964. But the radio fans who discuss that topic, as much as 'JFK fans' discuss this topic, wander all over the place and they would be thrown out of a Texas courtroom, and perhaps many other geographically located courtrooms.
The reason I follow two ships (Mi Amigo and Olga Patricia) is because they can only be addressed 'In Rem' ("The Thing") via an attorney at law, since they are inanimate objects incapable of saying anything for themselves. Therefore a paper trail has to be followed, and since the paper trail is not hidden by on file in public places for insurance purposes, it is there to be studied.
In this context both ships feature within the same timeline and refer to the same individuals whose names crop-up in this story. From a music standpoint, the New York and New Jersey Mafia and the Jewish Crime Syndicate are also players in this same story, but not in the case of the 'instant act' in Dallas on November 22, 1963, and this is where a Motion In Limine would be introduced to limit the scope of the trial. Otherwise the Actors named above who reside in New York and New Jersey would be linked to Tiny Tim and the Kray Twins in London, England.
Similarly, the involvement of Don Pierson with John Tower via associates in Wichita Falls would be linked to both Clint Murchison and George de Mohrenschildt who had dealings with Papa Doc in Haiti, while de Mohrenschildt was even married for a time to a Dorothy Pierson in Florida, albeit not directly connected to Don Pierson in Abilene, Texas. Then there is the fact that Don Pierson was also the president of a bank in Abilene, Texas at the same time that events in Dallas relating to the murder of JFK were taking place. To make matters even more foggy, the first offshore radio venture by Don Pierson (Radio London), was put together by the mastermind of offshore banking for both the Mafia and the CIA via Florida and the Bahamas.
Now add to all that the fact that Don Pierson obtained the Olga Patricia from the same bank that Manuel Artime Buesa used in Miami, and that declassified CIA documents show that the CIA obtained the Olga Patricia for the CIA. There is more. Much, much more.
So I am compartmentalizing the 'instant act' and limiting it to what is known as provable facts, and the movements of the Mi Amigo and Olga Patricia to what is known as provable facts. The provable facts in those separate instances all overlap like ripples in a pond that have been caused by separate rocks thrown into the pond by different actors.
Therefore I focus on the actual and known actors and the provable facts. Colorful anecdotes are for inclusion in told storylines to prevent readers falling asleep. In a courtroom dry facts sometimes cause even the jurors to nod off, even when a defendant's life may be at stake. That is a problem.
Here we are not in a courtroom and everyone can come and go as they please in order to stay awake.
We are in alignment if you approach this as a cold case murder investigation.
Can you provide a summary of evidence you might present to a DA to justify his or her indictment of Carlos Marcello? -
Jake Hamon, Dallas oil industry luminary and president of American Petroleum Institute in 1963 is but one thread to bring the World Commerce Corporation closer to the scene of the crime that was Dallas:
DALLAS . . . LAY OF THE LAND
Dallas… Dallas, ah goodness, I’m not sure what to say…
I wasn’t there anywhere near as often as Pierre… not at
all. But Pierre would say it was… Dallas was like the arms
and legs of the American secret service, your CIA….
—Rene Lafitte
Rene says oil smooths the way to silent,
and sometimes deadly, change.
—Lafitte notes
The lay of the land… lay of the land, Dallas
—Lafitte datebook, November 19, 1963
Jake Hamon and related clips from CiD
. . . A little-known fact is that Dallas real estate magnate, Mattie Caruth Byrd, married to David Harold Byrd who owned 411 Elm that housed the Texas School Book Depository, officed next door to Remington Arms in the Meadows Building. Mattie was the daughter of W. W. Caruth Sr. whose homestead provided the land for Southern Methodist University where Nuremberg trial attorney Robert G. Storey built his reputation as a legal expert for the oil and gas industry. Other names ceremoniously inscribed on the buildings at SMU include oilmen Algur Meadows, Buddy Fogelson, and Jake Hamon (president of the American Petroleum Institute in ’63), each with their own stake in Skorzeny’s scheme in Spain. Caruth Sr. was on the small board of Ralph Rogers’ Texas Industries, a cement and gravel business with operations in Chico, Texas where Thomas Eli Davis died. . . .Crichton’s Itinerary on the Road to Dealey Plaza
On September 13, 1963, just weeks after he and Brandy (presumably the hotelier joined in) and their fellow members of the 488th Intel had completed training at the Pentagon, the Dallas Morning News published a brief notice, “Dallas Man Joins Oil Group for Romanian Visit.” Crichton had been invited to participate in a US State Department delegation in conjunction with the American Petroleum Institute on a fact-finding mission to Princess Caradja’s beloved Romania and native land of his good friend Brandy Brandstetter. (Of note: Jake L. Hamon, Dallas oilman who in his capacity as president of the American Petroleum Institute traveled around the globe, had also been an active participant in the Meadows-Skorzeny venture in Spain where he met Ricardo Sicre, vice-president of the World Commerce Corporation who is named throughout the Skorzeny papers.) . . .
Weslie G. Rogers Oil Companies
Oklahoma oilman Wesley G. Rogers was the other primary tenant at 3707 Rawlins when the professional office building opened its doors. Rogers listed six oil and gas related businesses on the building marquis compared with Barron Kidd’s seven. Although Rogers maintained a large spread near Holdenville, OK, the family spent most of its time in an exclusive residential enclave in North Dallas. Their close neighbors included: Buck Wynne Jr., of the Wynne family dynasty, whose real estate investments involved Clint Murchison, Trammel Crow, and Leo Corrigan among others; Jack Ruby’s banker, Michaux Nash, who did business with one of the principals in the Algur Meadows 1963 petrochemical scheme in Longview, TX, that caught Otto Skorzeny’s keen interest; and Jake Hamon, the notorious independent oilman involved with the Skorzeny-Meadows scheme since 1952, president of the American Petroleum Institute and a close friend of—among others in the industry both national and international—Paul Raigorodsky and Clint Murchison.
. . . Of note, the address of Mrs. Frank Brandstetter in 1963 was listed as a condominium in the 3700 block of Turtle Creek where we can assume Brandy stayed the week of November 18, 1963. That summer, the Brandstetter’s building had a new tenant, an independent oilman who seems to have floated below the radar until now. Kidd’s house in Oak Lawn had recently burned beyond salvage, necessitating the move to the Turtle Creek condo. Kidd whose politics clearly aligned with the ultraconservative wing of the Republican Party was a member of the Texas Crusade for Freedom and close friend to a number of his peers in the oil industry including Clint Murchison, Sr., Jake Hamon, and Paul Raigorodsky about whom much has been considered in this chapter.
Chapter Notes:Earl Cabell: Cabell’s activity on behalf of the anti-communist organization included a trip to Munich, Germany, during which time he was a featured speaker on the Office of Policy Coordination’s Radio Free Europe. Indeed, Cabell saw the “evils of communism” and weighed in to halt it. On his return, Cabell participated in the founding of the Texas chapter of Ike’s Crusade for Freedom and was joined by among others, Dallas patriots Neil Mallon, D. H. Byrd, Everett DeGolyer, Lewis MacNaughton, Jake Hamon, Robert G. Storey, Jr., Paul Raigorodsky, and a rather obscure name in the annals of Kennedy research, oilman Barron Kidd.
Barron Kidd Jr.: Kidd was the namesake of his grandfather, Marvin Ulmer who served as Mayor of Midland, Texas in the 1940s. Marvin was the driving force behind the founding of the highly regarded Midland Air Force Base. There is no evidence to date that the Ulmer’s of West Texas were related to Dan Ulmer of Tyler, Texas, and his brother CIA station chief Al Ulmer named elsewhere in this book. Ulmer served as station chief in Madrid in the 1950s and was familiar with Jere Wittington, the agent who was assigned to “watch over” Otto Skorzeny in Madrid.)
J. Sowell who moved office from the Adolphus Tower to 3707 Rawlins, had been a groomsman for Barron Ulmer Kidd when Kidd married Pierre du Pont's daughter in May 1963. Barron Kidd Oil and related companies, Previews Inc., and J. Sowell / Delhi Properties were among the first tenants of the building. [the name Sewell, a close relative of Clint Murchison (not Sowell) appears in Delhi-Taylor records). In 1979, Carol Wesley Rogers, daughter of Wesley G. Rogers [another tenant of Previews while Ilse Skorzeny was a contract RE agent for the international firm] married fifty-one-year-old Donald Arthur Byrd. A Dallas native, Don Byrd joined the city’s police department in March 1951. He was promoted to detective in ’54 and lieutenant in ’57, a post he held on the day that John Kennedy was assassinated. Following training with the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, Lieutenant Byrd joined the Special Operations Division of the department reporting directly to Captain W. P. “Pat” Gannaway. Byrd oversaw twenty-two officers of Gannaway’s Vice Squad. Gannaway claimed to have initiated a roll call at the Texas School Book Depository within an hour of the assassination, erroneously establishing that because Lee Harvey Oswald was the only employee who had left the building prior to the arrival of authorities, a pursuit to tie Oswald to the rifle found in the sniper’s next was warranted. Several hours later, Gannaway advised the media that Oswald had been in the Soviet Union and had married a Russian girl. The patsy had been effectively identified.
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9 hours ago, Jonathan Cohen said:
Yet another un-asked for, lengthy post from Leslie Sharp that has absolutely nothing to do with the Kennedy assassination. Will it ever stop?
Vince Salandria was rarely mistaken, but when he said, they'll wear you down, he hadn't met Albarelli or those of us who recognized his revelations would shift the cold case murder investigation 180 degrees.
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"Lay of the land. . . lay of the land, Dallas"
Dresser Industries
The history of Dresser Industries, rising from a simple Oklahoma based pipeline business that serviced the oil industry to a conglomerate composed of long-established military contractors on a global scale, is complex. In the late 1920s, having survived as a solid but unexceptional business—except for the coveted patents they held—the Dresser family sold out to a fledgling private banking firm, Brown Brothers Harriman. In it what is alleged to have been a purely serendipitous moment, Ohio native and Yale graduate Henry Neil Mallon ambled through the doors of BBH, only to have Roland Harriman, a founding partner, spot him and cry out, “Dresser!” In spite of having no specific training in the specialized pipeline industry, Mallon, who was a friend of banker and politician Prescott Bush who had joined the Harriman banking firm, assumed the presidency of Dresser. During WWII, Mallon also mysteriously established a line of communication with NY lawyer and fellow OSS agent, Allen Dulles who would eventually control the Central Intelligence Agency, suggesting that Mallon long had the backing of close friends in positions of power.
The roots of Mallon’s benefactors extended to 19th century England. BBH was the result of a merger of Alex, Brown & Sons and the old-line Harriman family interests in the US. One of the first American financial organizations to help finance post-war rehabilitation in Europe, the firm boasted some of the country’s most notable executives and directors in the field of finance including George Herbert Walker of St. Louis and lawyer/statesman Robert A. Lovett of Texas whose father was a founding member of BBH. It was Lovett junior who a young President Kennedy would consult how best to fill his first cabinet. Another propitious nepotistic hire at BBH was George Walker’s son-in-law Prescott Bush, the congressman who would spawn generations of politicians including US presidents George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush.
During the 1930s, the son of railroad tycoon E. Roland Harriman, W. Averell Harriman and his banking firm BBH had turned a blind eye to the rise of fascism in Germany, and continued to do business with both communist Soviet Union and Germany long after Hitler’s invasion of Poland. Particularly odious is that he did so from a unique post as US Ambassador to the Soviet Union beginning in 1943. The firms that BBH, and by extension Harriman, profited from during the war included: Union Banking Corporation—the American arm of German steel magnate and “Hitler’s Angel,” Fritz Thyssen who helped fund the rise of the Nazis; Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation; Holland-American Trading Corporation and Silesian-American Corporation whose records reveal that Harriman’s partner, Prescott Bush of BBH was board member; and Dresser Industries.
Eventually, Neil Mallon had gobbled up on behalf of BBH and Dresser a significant number of military-related industries to create one of the country’s most important cogs in the “defense of freedom.” According to his obituary, Mallon “. . . built Dresser from an obscure pipeline equipment concern to a world leader in energy related products . . . Dresser currently employs 40,000 people in North America and reported earnings of $172.3 million in 1982 on revenues of $4.16 billion.”
Mallon proved to be an enigma in early Kennedy assassination research. Little is reported about his birth and childhood, perhaps because it lacked luster, perhaps because his early life has been deliberately obscured, or perhaps because he was a tool of US intelligence in league with the military industrial complex who benefited from decades of cover. However, Mallon may also be one of the more significant characters lurking behind the curtains, pulling strings. It has been credibly established that he was not only responsible for Prescott Bush’s son, George H. W. Bush’s move to Texas, but that he was an early investor in Bush’s oil venture Zapata Oil with operations in the Gulf of Mexico made available to US intelligence as needed.
Although it is not the mandate of this book to debate whether Mallon’s protégé, George H. W. Bush was privy to information, let alone an active participant in the events in Dealey Plaza, no assessment of the “lay of the land” of the assassination or analysis of Dresser and Neil Mallon—with his entrenched friendship with James Angleton’s boss, Allen Dulles—would be complete without considering Bush. The fact is, nowhere in the records of Pierre Lafitte who was clearly possessed of specific and detailed information related to the planning and execution of the coup in Dallas, is there a direct reference to Bush.
It could be argued that given the aforementioned history, Neil Mallon and those with whom he had fraternized within the petroleum industry and the intelligence community long before his young protégé (thirty years his junior), is as much a candidate for being privy to plans for the hit in Dallas as GHW Bush. According to freelance investigative journalist Anthony Kimery’s monograph, “George Bush and the CIA: In the Company of Friends,” available online at CovertAction Magazine, December 2018, “Mallon was a friend to numerous ranking Cold War era intelligence officials, including Allen Dulles—an OSS veteran and ground floor official of the CIA . . . Mallon steered prospective candidates for spy work to Dulles and often provided cover employment to CIA operatives . . . ” According to Kimery, among them was George de Mohrenschildt, another particularly important operative with whom Mallon was well acquainted, who had been part of the spy network Dulles ran inside Hitler’s intelligence organization. Mallon personally introduced the Count to a young twenty-four year old from Connecticut, George Bush at about the same time he handed Bush the highly sensitive responsibility of negotiating Eastern-bloc deals. It soon became apparent that Bush was able to wheel and deal with the communists’ petroleum experts without the slightest grimace by US authorities. In fact, writes Kimery, “when a Yugoslavian oil industry official came to the US in 1948 to talk to Dresser Industries, the State Department barely flinched and he went straight to neophyte salesman George Bush in Midland, Texas.” Bush and de Mohrenschildt, whose mutual focus on Yugoslavia is well documented, joined a cadre of young men who served as Mallon’s (and by extension Dulles’s) eyes and ears, arms and legs in the petroleum industry during the Cold War.
From his perch at Dresser headquarters in the Republic National Bank building, Mallon, who served on the board of RNB Dallas was the ideal conduit for his friend Allen Dulles and his fellow board member at RNB, Algur H. Meadows who leads us to the second location under scrutiny.
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All the rest is a fog of international intrigue which stretches across the Atlantic to Europe. The fact that it is a fog does not make it any less real or true. But it is not heart of the story that answers two basic questions: Who killed JFK and why? That answer rests with a Mafia boss in New Orleans who had both the money and a personal vendetta to make it happen.
If Money and Vendetta were the criteria, the list is long.
Just a few basic questions:
Did Marcello orchestrate Kennedy's visit to Texas?Did Marcello send Oswald to MC to establish a backstory for 'the patsy'?
Did Marcello set Oswald up with a job in the depository?
Did Marcello control the motorcade route?
Did Marcello handpick the shooters and teams?
Did Marcello have the power to cover up a broad daylight assassination in Dallas — for sixty years?
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4 hours ago, Cliff Varnell said:
I wasn’t responding to you.
I was responding to Leslie’s comment about Rosemary Willis.
Who's on First, What's on Second . . . 🙂
To clarify, Cliff, I was agreeing with you that ignoring testimony that doesn't suit a bias while cherry picking testimony to confirm that same bias is ludicrous at this stage.
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On 8/9/2023 at 9:22 AM, Larry Hancock said:
Vidal was a close friend of John Martino, and of Roy Hargraves - more importantly he was well established and regarded within the anti-Castro community in Miami and had been involved in plans for major boat missions against Cuba. He did not run drugs for anyone, but instead was killed on a high risk boat mission into Cuba, possibly outed to Cuban agents to make sure he was eliminated after the assassination.
He was in Dallas "ostensibly" trying to get money from Walker - on the other hand that was the same story given by Hemming, Hall and basically anyone traveling to Dallas that year, even though Walker never appears to have donated any money and was short on funds for his own political campaigns.
As to the roles of Vidal and Hargraves in Dallas, Noel Twyman revealed that in his interviews with Roy Hargraves; Noel gave me permission to include that with the very first spiral bound edition of SWHT but then it had to be removed in further editions based on objections from Hemming's brother who was serving as Hargrave's lawyer at the time.
Are the Twyman revelations related to the positions Vidal and Hargraves took on Elm, and to what end, no longer available?
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13 minutes ago, Cliff Varnell said:
So was 10-year old Rosemary Willis “in” on the plot?
Precisely.
So, working with the assumption Rosemary wasn't in on the plot, don't we still need to ask why Witt waited years to come forward? -
1 hour ago, Jonathan Cohen said:
Once again, a series of posts that have no connection whatsoever to the JFK assassination. Will the moderators please intervene?
Said Aline shortly before she died on December 11, 2017:
"It was [different] after eight or nine years. Otto [Skorzeny] came in as leader and everything changed . . . everything went through him. For me it was for the better. With the [assassination] transfer to Otto we were far more sophisticated. More weapons at our use . . . anything really . . . staff I didn’t know we had use of . . it became very sophisticated, more widespread. I was soon out of it. . . . I didn’t want to know half of what we were doing. . . ."
from the record of Pierre Lafitte, Skorzeny's manager on the ground for Lancelot Project:
A page from the financial ledger maintained by Pierre Lafitte brings the Countess’s story full circle. He writes, “Using old American Oil Mission cover with Harvey (JA),” which is clear reference to Aline’s American Oil Office. That particular ledger sheet also includes the names of Willoughby—a primary suspect in this investigation, Conrad Hilton [Hilton Hotels and board member of General Dynamics behind the F-111 scandal which Bobby Baker was embroiled in during the fall of ’63], ad man Rosser Reeves who was the brother-in-law of David Ogilvy who authored the mission statement for Bill Donovan’s WCC, and Charles Spofford, Gen. Eisenhower’s trusted confidant who along with Ogilvy ran Ike’s presidential campaign, coining the tag, “I Like Ike.” The other name, “Rothermel,” can be safely assumed to refer to Paul Rothermel, confidential assistant to Dallas oilman H. L. Hunt. Aline’s service to Frank Ryan and the World Commerce Corp. and reference to her old cover, American Oil indicate a certain continuity of intelligence operations throughout the Cold War. . . .
The Pilot/Nov 22/
Willoughby backup
teamsquad — techbuilding — phone booth/bridge
O [Otto Skorzeny] says turn them.
Silverthorne-
Ft. Worth
-Airport
Mexico
—Lafitte datebook, November 15, 1963
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45 minutes ago, Mervyn Hagger said:
Well, you have your life experiences and I have mine. Obviously what I know and you know are two different things but neither one is untrue.
I don't know how you could know with any certainty that Witt's testimony was meant as a Texas-style joke, but setting the excuse aside for the moment, are you interested in pursuing answers to the following specifics related to Umbrella Man and Radio guy?
Witt wasn't Umbrella Man but years later he was persuaded to claim that he was?
By whom? For what purpose?
Umbrella Man and Radio Guy appear to be acting in league in some capacity, in contradiction to Witt's testimony?
Radio Guy has been identified as non-Caucasian by many researchers ... but you speculate he may not have been.If he wasn't, does that change the dynamic between him and UM?
If he was, does that somehow support a "direct capacity" role of Cubans in Dealey?
Could Radio Guy have been French or Algerian? Does his clothing suggest Cuban or European?If Witt wasn't Umbrella Man, who was?
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Two-three degrees of separation that speaks to the pervading business and political ethos of Dallas and the South in the 1970s as the HSCA convened:
Robert W. Baxter's Rio Grande National Life was sold to a Cape Girardeau MO concern that has since morphed beyond recognition.
Cape G was the birthplace of rabid-conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh who filled the airwaves with outrageously racist, homophobic, far right rhetoric for decades.On the question of the Kennedy assassination in Dallas, Limbaugh said:
RUSH: You know how many people have died from socialism? Try a hundred million. A conservative estimate. Socialism, communism, totalitarianism, tyranny, you name it. A hundred million easy. But you know, folks, this guy, Roger from Pennsylvania and Maria Svart from the Democratic Socialists of America? If anybody in this country’s been brainwashed, it’s the American left. Sadly, not just the American left. In fact, quite a lot of America was brainwashed. Have you heard…? Do you remember on this program the times…?
If you don’t, I’m gonna tell you. There have been many times that people have called here and asked me, “When did this current liberalism start? Was it Woodrow Wilson?” they ask. “Was it earlier than that? Was it Civil Rights? When did this stuff all happen? When did it start? Was it the sixties? The Students for Democrat Society and the Vietnam War?” And remember my answer has always shocked people. Snerdley, you will remember. My answer is the incarnation of the modern left as you and I know it today is a direct result of the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
And I remember the first time I mentioned this, people could not believe that I was thinking straight. “You mean to tell me, Rush, you think the modern era of liberalism began with the assassination of JFK?” Yes, it did. I’ll give you a brief summary of why. We know — the evidence is conclusive — that JFK was killed by a communist, Lee Harvey Oswald. He was not killed by the right wing. He was not killed by extremists in Dallas or in the South or anywhere else in this country. He was killed by a communist with ties to Cuba. Lee Harvey Oswald was an avowed socialist and communist. (emphasis added.)
https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2015/10/19/how_the_jfk_assassination_ushered_in_the_era_of_modern_liberalism/
Lesser known is that Limbaugh trained at Elkins Institute in Dallas, learning his trade in the same political climate that made Dallas the perfect scene of the crime less than a decade earlier.
The KBOX tower site and transmitter building were located approximately 100 yards up a hill from the studio location at 9900 McCree. Because the station was directional 24 hours a day, engineers were required to be on duty around the clock, seven days a week. A mandate from the FCC required this, with fines in the thousands for violators.
Former KBOX PD Bill Ward remembered the complicated antenna patterns and the critical need for perfect alignment. He recalled attending a class to receive his Radiotelephone Operator’s Permit at the Elkins Institute of Radio in Dallas. The school was legendary for training men and women of all ages who were pursuing careers in broadcasting, whether on the technical side or programming side or both. Rusty “Rush” Limbaugh was one of Elkins’ most notable graduates.
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Pierre Lafitte datebook, 1963
in JFK Assassination Debate
Posted
Latin for the French word deux, meaning two.
It's interesting you seem obsessed with these four letters noted in a datebook you continue to discredit based on nothing other than a suspicion.