Leslie Sharp

Excuse me, Mervyn? I also KNOW these people having lived and worked around bankers, attorneys, real estate developers and oilmen in the region. Witt's testimony falls far short of what I would expect from the entertaining characters I encountered during my seventy-odd years in Texas and the SW.

I appreciate the bs that Texans in particular are infamous for; however, what does this have to do with Witt's testimony? Can you address the following: 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?

Most of us who grew up in Texas knew some real characters. However, Witt doesn't seem to match the profile you suggest; he does however come across as malleable.

I seriously doubt that.

he lied knowing that there was no penalty To what end, and at whose behest?

Reading between the lines: 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?

I'm curious what specifically in Witt's testimony you found unconvincing? Did you consider him to be a suspect based on the flechette theory? Did you consider he might have been a point man for the experienced assassins? Assuming he did not live in a vacuum following the assassination, he was aware for years that investigators pondered over the identity of Umbrella Man so why did he wait to come forward until his testimony before the HSCA? If he had simply been afraid to come forward, who or what might have instilled that fear?

Do you have the image of Umbrella Man and Radio Guy sitting side by side some minutes later?

INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER H. P. ALBARELLI JR. ON THE SUBJECT OF PIERRE LAFITTE . . . Former Army Colonel Albert R. Haney, who was a close and valuable source for this author’s investigation into Dr. Frank Olson’s murder, and was also quite close to CIA director Allen Dulles, after he valiantly assisted in bringing Dulles’s wounded son, Sonny, home from Korea, said [to Albarelli in Florida]: “I never met Lafitte, or whatever his name was, but I’d heard so much about him that I felt like I knew him. I’ll tell you this right up front: there were very few people like him, very few… I was told a story once, about an amazing incident where Angleton had somehow challenged Lafitte to try and fool him somehow. Anyway, a while later Angleton went to lunch one day and a very gracious maître d’ greeted him and took him to his table, where a most attentive waiter took his order and brought him his drinks. Angleton was there for about an hour or so and never once had any clue that the maître d’ and waiter were Pierre Lafitte, who greeted him on the sidewalk smiling broadly and still dressed as the waiter.” *** Former FBN agent and high-ranking US Treasury Department official Malachi L. Harney made some studied observations of Lafitte in his little-known book devoted to the subject of classic informers and law enforcement officials. Harney introduced Lafitte as a “most interesting character” and the “type of person sometimes of invaluable assistance to the law enforcement officer, who is an outsider, but must be in a compartment of his own. This is a sort of ‘private eye’ individual but a very special variety of that genus.” Claimed Harney, conforming to the cover story put out by the FBN about Lafitte’s beginnings with the Bureau, and embellishing some on his own with the infamous Joseph Orsini drug-case story: As an indication of his versatility, this man, who never had any previous contact with the narcotic traffic [sic], was able, when released from [Ellis Island] under security bond, to make a case resulting in the disclosure of a ring importing seventeen kilograms of heroin monthly through the Port of New York, through connivance of crewmen of the French Lines, who were members of a Corsican smuggling mob. Cooperation of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics with the French police brought about the seizure of a large clandestine heroin conversion plant in the outskirts of Paris. In addition to its magnitude, this case was highly important for its timing and for its revelation as to the source of a flood of heroin into New York. Lafitte, with Narcotic’s Bureau District Supervisor George H. White, went on from there to develop a case against a leading narcotics distributor in New England—a Mafia character who, as a sideline, had connections which enabled him to filch a steady supply of revolvers from a factory before the registry numbers of the weapons were recorded. Harney then speculated: “Lafitte would have been a great detective in any organization, combining a tremendously keen mind with a histrionic ability which made him an undercover operator par excellence. Some of his motivation to assist the law is quite simple. He had been able to make a good living at it, when one considers the rewards for recovering property and similar emoluments. He had a special reason for coming to us, in that he was anxious to enlist some official sympathy on trying to clarify an obscure, nationality status.” Harney does not explain this status, nor does he tell us how Lafitte’s immigration status was ultimately resolved [the CIA resolved it, under pressure from Lafitte], but we do know that in 1957 Bernard Fensterwald, a former State Department employee and highly regarded attorney, who had just been hired by US Senator Thomas C. Hennings, Jr. contacted the FBI at the direction of Hennings to inquire about the Bureau’s reaction to a request to Hennings to sponsor legislation to block the deportation of Lafitte. FBI official Louis B. Nichols responded: “I told Fensterwald that this, of course, was a matter for the Immigration Service and, on a purely personal and confidential basis, the Senator should be exceedingly cautious before he got out on a limb; that if he inquired into Lafitte’s background he would find an extensive record; and that under no circumstances would the Bureau support Lafitte. I told him officially, of course, we could not take a position but that, personally, we would hate to see some friend embarrassed and that he should be very cautious. Fensterwald stated that was enough for him.” All of this, of course, significantly adds to the overall mystery that still, to this day, surrounds the man known as Pierre Lafitte, but here it is important to note that Bernard Fensterwald later, during the mid-1970s, launched a thorough investigation of his own into the assassination of President Kennedy that in part focused strongly on French soldier and OAS coordinator Jean Rene Souetre (and the then unidentified CIA operative OJ/WIN), as well as several other foreign assassins, who had been expertly trained in Spain by Otto Skorzeny. It seems highly likely that Fensterwald’s initial exposure to Pierre Lafitte may have led him to these strong JFK assassination leads. It also seems highly probable that at the same time Fensterwald was aware that Lafitte had been tasked with undercover work in France attempting to unearth Soviet moles burrowed into the French government.

The World Commerce Corporation: Anthony Cave Brown, examining a letter written by WCC President Frank Ryan to General Lucius Clay, contends that the primary function of WCC was to aid in building up the post-WW2 productive capacity of Germany as a bulwark against a potentially encroaching Soviet Union, and that may well be the case. Prof. Peter Dale Scott who has studied the assassination of President Kennedy for decades, offers a potent hint of a deeper clandestine reality, which bespeaks important connections with the narrative of this book: “…George White’s closest CIA contact, James Angleton, was still working for the US Army at this time (1947), reporting to future Army G-2 and DIA chief William Quinn. And when White turned up in Italy to meet with his former OSS boss William Donovan, Donovan was not working for CIA, but for the elusive World Commerce Corporation, a private intelligence service representing wealthy Americans like Nelson Rockefeller…CIC (China), a subsidiary of Donovan’s World Commerce Corporation, was the firm that employed mob figure Sonny Fassoulis, at the urging of army colonel (and FBN agent) Garland Williams, to procure arms for Taiwan in the period of private procurement before the Korean War.” — CiD

The action taken regarding Major General Edwin Walker is amazing. Is it a crime nowadays to be a patriot? Is it a crime to teach Americanism to our troops? Must a general be “relieved of command” when he is giving his troops something to fight for? Who is relieving of command those in government who are responsible for the Communist foothold in this hemisphere? Who is being “relieved of command” for other Communists favoring actions in our State Department? —Frank T. Ryan, President, World Commerce Corporation June 25, 1961 This somewhat rousing endorsement by the president of the World Commerce may have gone unnoticed by the average American, but as reported in Chapter 2, the global power structure would recognize the WCC created by the director of the OSS, Bill Donovan and his counterpart in Britain, William Stephenson. As reported, the WCC had over the previous decade acted as an umbrella front for several hundred companies whose primary aim was self-serving information gathering and espionage, sprinkled heavily with sometimes deadly counterintelligence operations, while extracting profits from global markets. Frank Ryan, a former OSS officer under Donovan, had worked closely with Otto Skorzeny for years. For that reason alone, his remarks in support of Gen. Walker are revelatory.

further to the World Commerce Corporation and the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas . . . Aline’s [Countess Romanones] assignment in Madrid, January 1944 to August 1945, meant that she worked for OSS officer, Frank T. Ryan. As mentioned, Ryan, the son of a wealthy industrialist John J. Ryan, was the OSS chief of SI for Spain. At the end of the war, in April 1945, we now know that Frank Ryan helped his boss, William Donovan and William Stephenson (Intrepid), formerly of the SOE, form the BACC, the first incarnation of the World Commerce Corp. . . . Aline explains that she was instructed to prolong her visa by reopening offices for John J. Ryan and Sons where she would obtain bona fide sales to Catalan manufacturers. Then, abruptly, she was ordered to Paris to work for World Commerce Corporation, in a similar role she had filled in Madrid, but focused on French firms and their business in Czechoslovakia and Sweden. Six months later, she was sent to Zurich, Switzerland where she would again work for World Commerce to establish a similar office. The future countess writes: "My boss at the time was Frank Ryan, who had been the Chief of SI for Spain and Portugal in Washington. I had the impression that I would eventually be organizing networks for information on Soviet intelligence activities. I was scheduled to move to Prague to open offices there when I married. Only 40 years later [approximately 1990] did I learn that this company [WCC] was not openly being used as a cover for US government intelligence, even though everybody I saw and worked with during the two years in that job had been an OSS agent in one country or another. The company’s set-up seems to have been a precursor to the Iran-Contra situation, where sales from private companies were used to bolster pro-US groups in a foreign country." 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 team squad — tech building — phone booth/bridge O [Otto Skorzeny] says turn them. Silverthorne- Ft. Worth -Airport Mexico —Lafitte datebook, November 15, 1963

@Ed Berger Did Ladenburg Thalmann appear on your radar? ' . . . At first Donovan appears to have played no formal part in the establishment of either BACC or WCC, although his law firm, at that time known as Donovan Leisure Newton Lombard & Irvine acted as legal advisers.” (A few amateur historians have written that Allen Dulles’s law firm, Sullivan and Cromwell, served as advisers to BACC and WCC, but we found no hard evidence of that. Additionally, it has been written that Dulles encouraged Donovan to participate in BACC and WCC, but again no hard evidence of that was found.) This leads us to speculate that Donovan may have initially been the “face” of WCC rather than the inspiration as those listed in early documents for WCC include Harry Beaston Lake and W. W. Cumberland, both investment bankers at the firm Ladenburg Thalmann, 25 Broad St. NYC. In 1879, American banker Ernst Thalmann, teamed up with Adolph Ladenburg, the scion of a German banking family. As confirmed in “History of Ladenburg Thalmann,” by World War II the firm was providing banking services for British Security Coordination (BSC), including acquisition of foreign currency which was required in small denominations by a plethora of British covert wartime agencies as well as escape packs for Allied aircrew. The SOE turned to the BSC, and the close links between the BSC and Donovan's OSS meant that there was continual collaboration between all three entities in support of this task. Harry Lake and Bill Donovan shared an address at the exclusive One Sutton Place for a number of years. It should be noted that Lake was on the board of the American Moroccan Corporation, which will have greater relevance as we pursue the role of Thomas Eli Davis, Jr. in Chapter 5. In a convenient web of other addresses, Donovan’s law partner, George Stanley Leisure lived at 640-660 Park, sharing a prestigious address with J. Russell Forgan, another founding board member of World Commerce. Leisure was on the board of financial investment giant Empire Trust whose web extends over time to those active on the ground in Dallas that managed the immediate aftermath of the assassination. Forgan’s company, Glore Forgan was heavily invested in J. Peter Grace’s W. R. Grace & Co., a global maritime shipping concern. Grace, the first Grand Master of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, a.k.a. the Knights of Malta, in America, sat on Forgan’s board for decades. Of note, at the height of the war, the man at the official helm of the SOE, Roundell Palmer, the 3rd Earl of Selborne, was also in charge of economic warfare, placing him in close proximity to decisions involving the services Ladenburg Thalmann provided. Reporting directly to Lord Selborne was Viscount Frederick Leathers, a former Minister of Transport who was placed in charge of war support. For those more familiar with the esotericism that pre-occupied the shadows of power at the time, both in the US and Britain, both men were alleged members of the Prieuré de Sion, a neo-chivalric fraternal order with alleged roots in the Crusades, established legally in 1956 in France. In an instance of continuity, Viscount Leathers later appears in the roster of board members of the World Commerce Corporation. Brown explains that among those legal advisers [Donovan and Leisure’s firm] was Lt. Col. Otto C. Doering, Donovan’s second in command at the OSS. Donovan only became an official director of WCC in October 1947. At the same time, Edward R. Stettinius, Secretary of State from November 1944 to July 1945, who had substantial holdings in WCC joined the board. According to Brown, in due course a number of other people prominent in intelligence and special operations joined the firm, as directors, officer, or shareholders. They included J. Russell Forgan of the Glore Forgan group of merchant bankers (and future career ambassador David Bruce’s successor as chief of OSS Europe; Lester Armour (former deputy chief mission to Moscow who would inherit the chairmanship of the Swift Armour packing company of Chicago); W.K. Eliscu (a member of Donovan’s OSS staff); Lieutenant Colonel Rex L. Benson (staff member of the British Secret Intelligence Service and chairman of merchant bankers Robert Benson and Company of London. Here it should be noted that Benson was the lead SOE interrogator of Otto Skorzeny after his surrender. Brown adds that the WCC board also included several persons who had been prominent in the Canadian intelligence services. In addition, Brown tells us that people with intelligence connections, but not formally members of any intelligence service, took an interest in the corporation. They included Nelson Rockefeller (son of John D., and former coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, an organization with intelligence responsibilities and associations in South America); John Jay McCloy (former undersecretary of the War Department and high commissioner in Germany) Richard Mellon (of Gulf Oil corporation); and Sir Victor Sassoon. The list of WCC board members and “interested parties'' reflects America and Britain’s future power brokers that would influence matters on a global scale as the Cold War escalated. With so many powerful corporate titans interested in the WCC, in hindsight the holding company emerges as a quango, an acronym for ‘quasi-autonomous nongovernmental organization, a term coined in the 1970s inspired by remarks of the president of Carnegie Corporation in 1967 describing “a genus of organization which represents a noteworthy experiment in the art of government.” Were the founders of the WCC following European models established under fascist regimes for the control of and profit from global supply chains and markets, and did that agenda require the services of the sophisticated intelligence apparatus established by Donovan and Stephenson being shuttered by democratically elected government officials after the war? A former employee of WCC recounts, “The idea was to take advantage of the organization and international contacts that were set up during the war… The goal was to set up various companies, mostly in Central and South America.” And as British writer and wartime intelligence officer Roald Dahl argued in support of the creation of WCC, “we all needed jobs in civilian life.”' CiD

Thanks for this level of detail @Ed Berger re: Biddle Sawyer: chemical company of which the WCC took a "controlling interest" ' . . . As evidenced in his private papers, by the early 1950s, Skorzeny was very much involved financially and operationally with WCC. Over the years the WCC had acquired the majority stock in worldwide trading group Biddle Sawyer Corp. headquartered in NYC which dealt in chemicals, pharmaceuticals, botanical drugs, waxes, gums, and essential oils. The transaction secured Anthony J. Drexel Biddle a membership on the board of WCC. In 1961, Biddle became US Ambassador to Spain, placing him in close proximity to Otto and Ilse Skorzeny, arms merchant Victor Oswald, and Johannes Bernhardt among various other “former” Nazis ensconced in Madrid. Biddle returned to the US in April ’62, and World Commerce folded, allegedly for tax reasons, on August 31st of that year with reported gross income from trading—commodities included—to commissions and interest to just under $1 million with a total net income of $514,000, a far cry from its first year of operation, 1947 when it posted a $50,000 loss. This history of conglomerates tied directly to global commodities markets while at the same time serving as fronts for political and intelligence operations, contributes to the argument that the stock scandal with the valued food commodity vegetable oil—mostly soybean—at its center, brewing since 1962 and climaxing hours before the assassination deserves greater coverage whether tied directly to this investigation or not. Prior to its folding, from 1950 through to 1958, Otto Skorzeny was in written communication with WCC president Frank Ryan and vice-president, as well as international playboy and one of Bill Donovan’s OSS agents, Ricardo Sicre. Named in Otto’s private papers, Sicre (frequently using the alias Richard Stickler) had established a training school for spies who crossed into Vichy, France into Spain. After the war, Sicre was installed as a vice president of WCC, adding to a body of evidence that WCC was being used as a privately controlled international espionage and assassination network. In time, he would arrange countless covert arms shipments facilitated under the auspices of WCC, often directly linked to US Military Assistance Advisor Groups. Much of this covert work of which Sicre played a major role involved former CIA Madrid Station Chiefs Alfonzo Rodriquez (1951) and James A. Noel (1963). Rodriguez, a.k.a. Earle Williamson and Wallace Growery, and Noel, a.k.a. Woodrow Olien, each had a lengthy history in agency operations in Cuba as well as Spain (see Endnotes) Whether they were witting participants or not, Rodriguez and Noel serve as a segue between WCC and any serious exposition of the maneuvers among elements of the CIA hierarchy that contributed to the assassination plot. — CiD (and can you speak to the claim that WCC folded in 1962?)

Setting aside the fact Witt failed to come forward long before he was called to testify before the HSCA, the first time I read this testimony I thought his story was plausible, including his account of the remark made by the fella who sat down beside him. However, when I tracked his history at Rio Grande National and the company his boss kept professionally and socially, the Chamberlain excuse seemed more and more contrived. Years later, when I started work on Coup with Albarelli, we revisited the high strangeness and synchronicity of dozens of "coincidences" one comes across when studying the "lay of the land," Dallas. Whether Witt/RGMLI/Baxter are anything other than 2-3 degrees of separation hasn't been resolved.

September 12 Askins? September 13 vu je Rudel September 14 Canon — S + V? October 2 Askins — Willoughby- ok. November 5 (Meet with Crichton at Tech building} (Walker) O says Lancelot = go phone booth

I wonder why he wasn't asked about a guy standing next to him with a radio? Or was he?

I wonder why he wasn't asked about a guy standing next to him with a radio? Or was he?

@Cliff VarnellLololol. Free Witt indeed. So, are you convinced Witt was UM?

Why did Witt come forward if he wasn't UM?

Alan K. has made the same argument.

How can anyone argue those images aren't significant. However, the photo of him sitting with the "umbrella man" introduces many questions. I opened a new thread on UM.

@Mervyn Hagger If Vidal is the primary candidate for Radio Guy, who with an initial "S " might have been beside him pumping an umbrella?

@Mervyn Hagger Most are aware that Louis Steven Witt worked for Rio Grande National Life Ins. founded by South Texas businessman Robert Wiley Baxter. (Roy Truly who hired LH Oswald lived in the same block of Jade St. as the secretary/treas. of Baxter's RGNLI.) Dallas INS office was located in Baxter's Rio Grande, compelling Oswald to have been inside the building. In 1963, the SW region commissioner of INS was Harlon B. Carter, former head of Texas Border Patrol who was a close friend of fellow border patrol and infamous sharpshooter Charles Askins. Following the war, Army Col. Askins was posted in the US embassy in Madrid. Government records indicate Col. Askins was assigned to keep tabs on the arms dealings conducted by Hitler's one time favorite commando Otto Skorzeny from his base in the Spanish capital. Reports of Skorzeny's activities were also crossing the desk of chief of Western European division Office of Special Operations, Winston Scott. At the time, CIA agent Al Ulmer — who on November 22 was visiting his brother Dan in Tyler Texas along with George and Barbara Bush — was also posted in Madrid. Fast forward, Witt's boss R.W. Baxter was on the board of Texas Bank and Trust with Robert Baxter Garrett who lived at 3525 Turtle Creek Blvd., home of Clint Murchison's notorious gambling venue and residence of Sun Oil Co. Jack and Roberta Pew, long time business mentor of Ilya Mamantov who, at the behest of Pew's good friend Jack Crichton of Empire Trust, served as Marina's initial translator in the hours following her husband's arrest. Crichton, along with Joe Zeppa of Tyler who on that fateful Friday flew Barbara and George from Tyler to catch a flight out of Love Field, played integral roles in the 1952 Skorzeny - Meadows oil scheme blessed by Spanish-fascist dictator Franco. In October of 1963, Algur H. Meadows — board member of Republic National Bank and primary source of the bank's hidden assets filed under the Howard Corporation, along with a cadre of Dallas independent oilmen returned to Madrid to receive an award for his efforts. Is it reasonable to suspect Meadows et al had a reunion with Otto and Ilse Skorzeny in Madrid just weeks before the assassination on their home turf? Has it been determined why Baxter's employee at Rio Grande Louis Steven Witt waited years to come forward to claim that he walked all the way from Field St., carrying an umbrella and by-passing numerous opportunities along the way only to settle on 411 Elm to harass the president's motorcade?