3 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

While reading about White in A Terrible Mistake I noticed a reference to a Colonel James (Hunter) Drum, who was present at a meeting with White, Sidney Gottlieb, Angleton and others discussing using LSD on unsuspecting test subjects in 1953. Drum was head of what was known, perhaps later, as the CIA’s Technical Services Division. Maybe I’m repeating something others have already posted about. I’m thinking of the notation in the datebook ‘DUUM’. 

But the context of DUUM is rifles into building, DPD, etc.  Not sure why Drum would surface on November 20 in this context.

DUUM is the Latin word for deux, French for TWO as in rifles.

This is an instance of why singling out words, terms, initials, phrases, names from any given entry can lead to confusion and possibly distort (witting or not) the investigation.  

21 minutes ago, Evan Marshall said:

The anti-Castro Cubans weren't worried about what people thought as long as JFK was publicly murdered

Can you identify those anti-Castro Cubans by name?
 

2 hours ago, Evan Marshall said:

I knew Charley Askins and never heard him called Boots. All the contempary  gun writers I've talked to never heard it either. Naming an operation to murder JFK of Camelot fame as "Lancelot" is simply stupid. As I've said before I've had three books published and am currently working three more and none of them have anything to do with JFK. I have no interest in writing such a book and have satisfied myself that elements of JM Wave and anti-Castro Cubans were involved. Met and talked to a Vietnam era sniper who was bought in as unneeded backup and a Green Beret Master Breecher who informed me the car parked by the underpass was full of explosives in case JFK reached that point alive. There was AND is all sorts of "talent" in this country to perform the task and the actual name of the operation was "Black Crows". I find Tipping Point the most credible book.

And I learned as a Homicide copper that confidential informants are never identified. Don't believe me? I really don't care because I'm not trying to entice folks buy my JFK book because there won't be one!

Evan, Are you basing your argument on the nickname "Boots"? Or on the name of the operation Lancelot which btw was Angleton's choice and it is uncertain whether it's reference to Jackie's later invocation of Camelot.

I'm glad you're at least sharing more of your hypothesis to the extent you've identified the "actual name of the operation," Black Crows.

Do you know who ran Black Crows, or why it was named that?

Do you by chance recall the model(s) of pistols Askins favored?

Do those in your circle agree with you that Charlie wasn't in Dallas on November 22?
 

1 hour ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

Leslie Sharp writes:

Well, that's a start. We now have a straightforward sentence that begins to explain the current state of play. The authentication is incomplete.

It would be helpful if Leslie could set out, in one comment and in clear English (or Latin; either would do), the ways in which the authentication is incomplete. The following questions may help to identify the details that ought to be provided:

• Have the ink, paper and handwriting in the datebook all been examined by accredited experts (assuming that such a thing exists in the realm of handwriting analysis)?
• If the ink, or the paper, or the handwriting have not been examined by any accredited experts, why has this not happened?
• If this has happened, who are those experts, what are their credentials, and what precisely are the results of their examinations?
• Where can we read the results of their examinations of the datebook?
• If these results are not publicly available, what steps are being taken to make them publicly available?
• If no such steps are being taken, why not?
• In short, what solid evidence is there to support the claim that the datebook is authentic?

Earlier, Greg Doudna gave good reasons to suppose that the datebook is not authentic. Rather than deal with the points he made, he was bullied into silence, which is a pretty strong indication that:

• Greg's criticisms were accurate;
• the datebook is probably a fake, as most of us suspect;
• and Greg's attackers also suspect that it's probably a fake.

As Jim and Tom pointed out, the treatment of Greg was disgraceful and the moderators really ought to do something about it, if they haven't already (and about the spamming of the forum with numerous threads about the same topic, including lengthy quotations from the holy book: it's like 'Harvey and Lee' all over again).

Given the number of individuals over the years who have claimed involvement in the JFK assassination on dubious grounds, it shouldn't be a surprise that people are refusing to accept the authenticity of a document which:

• hardly anyone has seen,
• is not in the public domain,
• contains vague and incomplete statements which are open to wild interpretation (e.g. an illegible squiggle = DUUM = "two rifles were taken into the building" = a bunch of Nazis killed JFK, or something),
• and, as Leslie admits, has not been properly authenticated.

The last of these is the most worrying: a book has been published which pushes a theory that relies fundamentally on a hand-written document which has not even been authenticated!

When there is any doubt about written sources, the first thing a reputable author of non-fiction would do is to verify those sources, and only then construct a theory based on those sources. I'm sure Leslie can appreciate why so many of us find the "incomplete" nature of the authentication worrying.

Leslie clearly wants to find out the truth about the JFK assassination. No doubt she's aware of the harm that might be caused to JFK assassination research if her theory gets publicity in the media, only for the datebook then to be exposed as a fake.

• Have the ink, paper and handwriting in the datebook all been examined by accredited experts (assuming that such a thing exists in the realm of handwriting analysis)?

As referenced previously, examination of the datebook funded by a documentary film company under contract for a 6-8 part series based on the forthcoming book Coup in Dallas was initiated in London in November 2018. 

• If the ink, or the paper, or the handwriting have not been examined by any accredited experts, why has this not happened?
• If this has happened, who are those experts, what are their credentials, and what precisely are the results of their examinations?

The examination was stalled in early 2019 due to insufficient handwriting exemplars. I previously provided Greg (in particular) with the names of the experts in their respective fields, thinking that with his apparent background in this area he might recognize their names. Perhaps you can review that exchange.

• Where can we read the results of their examinations of the datebook?

The preliminary report of the handwriting expert remains under a binding Non-Disclosure Agreement with his firm and the documentary film company.

The ink and paper analysis remains the property of the documentary film company as well. The examiner is also under NDA.

Final authentication came to a screeching halt with Hank's stroke in mid-May, 2019.

• If these results are not publicly available, what steps are being taken to makethem publicly available?

A separate examination was initiated in the US in the fall of 2022; the status remains incomplete pending additional handwriting exemplars, the same obstacle encountered in London.

• If no such steps are being taken, why not?
• In short, what solid evidence is there to support the claim that the datebook is authentic?

We have been advised by three respected experts in this field that unless this case is brought to court, a final report on authentication can and likely will be challenged, regardless. Anyone in "the community" for example, can hire another examiner to dispute a finding.

The London reports were not Hank's property; efforts to obtain at least a nominal statement from either of the experts — both of whom remain under NDA — have thus far failed. If either responds to inquiries from parties with no legal standing,  as one who does have legal standing, I would be most interested in what they have to say.  

Notes on the Appointment and Call Diaries 

of Allen Dulles, 1962–1963

by Alan Kent
(essay as published in the appendix of Coup in Dallas by H. P. Albarelli Jr. with Leslie Sharp and Alan Kent)

Princeton University, the alma mater of legendary one-time director of the Central Intelligence Agency Allen Dulles, houses a fascinating collection of material compiled by and about Dulles. Among the most interesting sources of information are the appointment and call diaries of Dulles, which are available—more or less—for the years 1939–1974, per Princeton's text. Dulles died in 1969, so I assume that the last figure is in error, unless Dulles possessed even greater powers than his admirers credit him with. Here I will be examining the records of some of Dulles’s doings during 1962–1963. This time period encompasses the formal end of Dulles’s long intelligence career—as is well-known, Dulles was escorted out of the Kennedy government after the CIA’s dicey performance prior to and during the Bay of Pigs invasion—and the assassination of the man who escorted him, President Kennedy. 

            Dulles formally left his position as DCI in November 1961, but by January of the following year he began to create a new position for himself, one in which he had scarcely less influence within a circle of powerful friends than he had enjoyed at the head of CIA, and arguably even less accountability. As Dulles biographer David Talbot wrote: “In truth, the Kennedy purge had left the ranks of Dulles loyalists at the CIA largely untouched. Top Dulles men like Angleton and Helms remained on the job. And the ‘Old Man’s’ shadow knights never abandoned their king…Dulles had been deposed, but his reign continued.”

            Before delving into an examination of some of the patterns and specific detail revealed by this material, a common-sense caveat should be made: Dulles was a very intelligent and devious man, who was quite capable of arranging communications and meetings that would fall outside the records that he and whatever secretarial person or persons he employed over the years created. One example of this is the strange meeting Dulles attended on April 15, 1963 with retired Army general Lucius D. Clay and a (still) mysterious anti-Castro exile, Paulino Sierra Martinez. We know about this meeting today due to CIA monitoring of Sierra’s whirlwind 1963 activities, but there is no hint of the meeting to be found in Dulles’s appointment diaries. It is also the case that more than a few contacts that Dulles had during this time period are redacted, either wholly or in part. Sometimes the redactions are present in the familiar form of a crude crossing out, and others are simply listed as being “redacted.” 

            No doubt, some of Dulles’s contacts, particularly so soon after his departure from a long reign as DCI, would have qualified as “national security” matters, as that category was broadly interpreted at the time. There are, however, more of these redactions than would seem necessary for the communications of a man who was nominally a private citizen at this time of his life. The operative term here, though, is “nominally.” Because the record of his ’62–’63 contacts shows that—with the exception of the absence of meetings with foreign dignitaries and intelligence chiefs that occurred frequently during his time as DCI, Dulles was still doing business.

1962

January 1962 was a pivotal time in the history of CIA, and in Dulles’s life. He was removing himself from the position at the head of the organization, and transferring information and advice to his successor, John McCone. As would be expected, there was much communication with Dulles’s most trusted contacts. Jan. 8, a note from a message left asks him to “Please call Cord Meyer,” and an afternoon appointment with Meyer was arranged. Jan. 9 featured a lunch with Tracy Barnes, a meeting with CIA Counterintelligence head Jim Angleton, and an evening visit by Sen. Prescott Bush. On Jan. 10, Mrs. Tracy Barnes invited Mrs. Dulles to lunch, and a call from former Deputy Director of CIA Gen. Charles Cabell. Cabell invited Dulles to attend a get-together later in the month, celebrating Gen. Cabell’s achievements, prior to Cabell cleaning out his office and moving on as of Jan. 31. On Jan. 15, Angleton met with Dulles at Allen’s home. On Jan. 16, an interesting call from Tracy Barnes took place. “Mr. Barnes said they hoped to have ‘it’ to go tomorrow for Mr. McCone. Mr. Dulles will take ‘it’ in pieces.” Dulles had a 3:45 appointment with McCone on this day, and (presumably) a meeting with the new DCI on the following day in which “it” was presented to McCone. 

            Jan. 17 brought a phone call from another man who had recently been “retired” from the Kennedy administration, former Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Arleigh Burke. Burke’s call was regarding a weekend meeting of the “Defense Committee.” Burke and Dulles would communicate frequently about this shared membership over the next few months, very likely a reference to the developing Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), which was officially inaugurated in September, just before the Cuban Missile Crisis. Jan. 19 was a busy day for the former DCI. Calls from Barnes and Cord Meyer were recorded, as well as a call from a Dulles favorite, E. Howard Hunt. Hunt’s call referred to a “news item,” and the contents of the call were redacted. Five separate phone calls placed to Dulles on Jan. 19 were fully redacted. A Jan. 22 call from a “Col. White” had to do with something referred to as the “deer incident” . . .

            February 1962 had few entries in Dulles’s diaries, but March and April show a good deal more activity. A March 23 note refers to (Redacted), who will be in town “next week.” “What time will be convenient?” asks Dulles’s secretary. On March 28, Angleton’s head of the Research and Analysis Department of CIA CI, Raymond Rocca called, to discuss the “Hohenlohe papers” with Dulles. These papers, which were circulating in a truncated form in the early 1960s, covered a late-World War Two relationship Dulles had developed with Maximilian von Hohenlohe, a Nazi courier, with whom Dulles, then in OSS, was attempting to broker an agreement for a Nazi surrender. This business was not sanctioned by anyone of authority in the US government, and Dulles was understandably nervous about allegations that he had been flirting with treason. On March 30, (Redacted) called to seek an appointment with Dulles, and to remind Allen that his time in Washington was “very limited.” 

            April 3 featured a lunch appointment with Frederick Praeger, the owner of a publishing company which CIA had a long-standing relationship with. Praeger would pitch books he wanted to publish, which comported with Agency interests, but which were not economically feasible to publish, and the Agency would frequently subsidize the publication and marketing of these books. Cord Meyer had been involved in this previously, and Tracy Barnes and his assistant at the Domestic Operations Division, Howard Hunt, would be involved with the Praeger operation. As is often the case during this period of time, Dulles seems to have been actively involved with Agency business that he was supposed to have been separated from.

             In April ’62, Dulles had appointments with important active CIA station head Bronson Tweedy and another appointment with one of Dulles’s Agency favorites, Tracy Barnes. In the wake of the Bay of Pigs fallout, Barnes was busily staking out his Agency future, while his fellow participants in the “fiasco” were shown the door. April 23 brought a call from Agency legend Henry Hecksher regarding an “article on Indonesia,” and a call from Barnes, who said he had decided to “do nothing for the time being.” (A great many of the Dulles calls were monitored for content by Dulles’s secretary. Some were not and are specifically designated “not monitored.”) On April 25, DCI McCone issues a dinner invitation to Dulles. McCone and Dulles would communicate and meet frequently over the next few months. April 30 brought a call from head of CIA’s Far Easter Division, Desmond Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald and Dulles discussed the “situation in Laos.” That situation involved CIA opposition to President Kennedy’s policy of attempted neutrality between competing factions in that country, a policy Kennedy had laid down soon after taking office, amidst a powerful barrage of military and intelligence advice to him to intervene forcefully in Laos.

            The close Dulles-McCone relationship, and Dulles’s frequent “informal” consulting with key Agency personnel on matters concerning US foreign policy brought forth a caustic evaluation from veteran diplomat W. Averill Harriman. Harriman spoke with Kennedy aide Arthur Schlesinger in May 1962. Harriman told Schlesinger that JFK’s policy of Laotian neutrality was being “systematically sabotaged by the military and the CIA.” “McCone and the people in the CIA want the president to have a setback,” Harriman contended. “They want to justify the [interventionist] position CIA took five years ago. They want to prove that a neutral solution is impossible, and that the only course is to turn Laos into an American bastion.” McCone, who largely shared the Dulles perspective, “has no business in the New Frontier,” railed Harriman, who clearly believed, as David Talbot suggests, that Kennedy’s purge of the CIA had not been sweeping enough. In 1963, Dulles would accurately inform a newspaper columnist who had authored a critical piece on CIA operations that “Since my retirement, there have been few important policy changes, and I am wholly in support of its new chief and of its recent work.”

            Nineteen sixty-two would continue to be an “active” year for Dulles, as reflected in his appointment and call diaries. He began to meet regularly with his old friend and former Agency kingpin Frank Wisner, who had suffered a great deal of emotional anguish during his last few years at CIA, and had retired from the Agency in ’62. Dulles met journalist and Agency asset Isaac Don Levine on June 13. On July 13, Dulles also met “Mr. Wyatt,” likely Mark Wyatt, an old-boy Agency operator from the late 1940s, and a man who would be tasked with the unenviable job of supporting Bill Harvey in Rome, after Harvey’s RFK-led exile following the Cuban Missile Crisis. 

            Summer meetings with long-time Agency asset Perkins McGuire and State Department clandestine operator Robert Murphy, as well as continued meetings with McCone filled Dulles’s schedule. McGuire, former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Supply and Logistics, appears multiple times in the papers of Otto Skorzeny and, per the research of historian Ralph Ganis, was the US government contact who authorized the clandestine use of Skorzeny’s training camps by US Army special forces. Multiple meetings with Dulles’s protégé, Angleton, at times with Howard Hunt in tow, and continued frequent contact with Ray Rocca occurred during 1962. Some of the Rocca calls were redacted. In a particularly striking illustration of Dulles’s continued sway within CIA, on Oct. 8, Dulles requested certain OSS records from the new Far Eastern station head William Colby. Records that Dulles probably had no right to have at the time. Colby’s first response was to “request an autographed picture of AD.”

            Dulles continued to communicate regularly with close associate William A. M. Burden during 1962 and early 1963. Burden, the great-great grandson of the founder of the Vanderbilt wealth, railroad baron Cornelius Vanderbilt, who maintained a business office at a New York City address (630 Fifth Avenue) in which Dulles was also ensconced, ran the gamut of US national policy and prime corporate positions. Burden served on the boards of the Hanover Bank, Lockheed Aircraft Co., and CBS during his lengthy career. He had been a director of the Council on Foreign Relations, and founded a family investment firm that bears his name today. During the Second World War he had been a Special Assistant for Research and Development to the Secretary of the Army Air Force. 

            Following a heavy campaign contribution to the 1956 Presidential campaign of Dwight Eisenhower, Burden was granted an ambassadorship to Belgium, a position he held from 1959–1961, during the period of time that the former imperialist power was struggling to hold on to the remnants of past wealth and national glory. After the ascension to power in the Congo of charismatic leader Patrice Lumumba, Burden strongly felt the threat that Lumumba’s independence posed to Belgium’s long-time pre-eminence in the mineral-rich Congo, and was lobbying his long-time friend Dulles for action against Lumumba in 1959. 

            Dulles, Burden, and the State Department’s C. Douglas Dillon led the charge to persuade President Eisenhower to take serious action against Lumumba, culminating in an August 1960 “direct approval” by Eisenhower of Dulles’s backing of a plot to assassinate Lumumba. While the US-Belgian war to eliminate the Congolese leader moved forward in 1960–61, journalist James Phelan would report receiving a postcard from the Congo, mailed by his friend and clandestine source Pierre Lafitte, who was engaged in…something in that embattled country at the time.

1963

In 1963, Dulles maintained some of the same contacts, but there were noticeable differences. Part of this was his interest in preparing the book that would be published under his name in the fall of the year, to be titled The Craft of Intelligence. Dulles spent time going over galleys for the book and in communication with his publisher, a long-time friend, Cass Canfield, of Harper and Row. Dulles also spent a great deal of time with the men who effectively “ghosted” the book: Howard Roman, whose wife Jane Roman was part of Jim Angleton’s shop at CIA Counterintelligence, Fortune magazine reporter Charles Murphy, and E. Howard Hunt, then working for Tracy Barnes at DOD. Dulles tapped renowned CIA analyst Sherman Kent for research, and used Frank Wisner as a sounding board. There was less communication with Angleton on the record than there had been in 1962, and far less communication with Tracy Barnes. In light of the notes made by Pierre Lafitte, the timing of some of the contacts Dulles had with these men will be examined shortly. 

            Tracy Barnes phoned on April 1, but Dulles was not available. Barnes “will call again” the notation reads. But he would not contact Dulles on his business phone for some time. On April 17, dinner was had with Jim and Cicely Angleton. On April 24, Angleton phoned Dulles. On April 23, the November visit of JFK to multiple Texas cities was announced by Lyndon Johnson. May through August ’63 were “light” as far as calls and appointments went. A couple of meetings with Wisner, and an appointment with Praeger were recorded. Angleton phoned on June 28. Lafitte datebook entries during this time period suggest the possibility that Pierre visited New York City, and that he had planned meetings with Charles Willoughby and Ilse Skorzeny, although we do not know when these entries were written. Dulles took a long vacation to Colorado in July, likely aligned with Aspen Institute’s summer schedule. July and August were very light in recorded communications by/with Dulles. 

            June 12 featured an evening reception for Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric and his wife. Dulles had been invited by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Maxwell Taylor, who had organized the reception. This is as good a place as any to note that both McNamara and Taylor highly respected Allen Dulles. Taylor would serve with Dulles on the board of a major Wall Street investment firm—Nation-Wide Securities—prior to assuming a role in Mexico City with Canadian based Mexican Light and Power, and after he served as Kennedy’s Joint Chief. Nationwide was heavily invested in military contractors. McNamara, interviewed by author Noel Twyman in 1994, took care to absolve Dulles from any possible involvement in the assassination of President Kennedy. “McNamara made a very specific point that in his view it was impossible that Allen Dulles and Richard Helms were behind the Kennedy assassination,” wrote Twyman. “He reiterated several times that Richard Bissell, Allen Dulles, and Richard Helms had been or were still his close personal friends; that he knew them like brothers…” Such was the aura of institutional respectability that surrounded Dulles during his lifetime.

            September and October, as reflected by the appointment and call diaries, heat up considerably for Dulles. Meetings with Arleigh Burke, Cord Meyer, Wisner, and Sam Papich from FBI are recorded, as well as a dinner with former President Eisenhower. September 19 features a very strange bit of clandestine…something. Following a call from Howard Hunt, an entry reads: “Mrs. Nickerson, Montreal, said she had been ‘instructed’ to give ‘very urgent’ material to Mr. Dulles, personally.” “Dulles in N.Y.” “Subsequently, letter and package were delivered.” 

            September also brought a Dulles meeting with the board of Calvin Bullock, Lt., and an agreement to address that board subsequently. The Bullock group, headed by close Dulles associate Hugh Bullock, was one of the top investment-management firms in the United States and, at various times during this period, featured the chairman of General Dynamics (and former Army Secretary) Frank Pace, Gen. Maxwell Taylor, Admiral R.B. Carney (Chief of Naval Operations during the Eisenhower administration), and President of Columbia University, Grayson Kirk on its Board of Directors. No doubt, the degree to which Dulles remained plugged in to strands of national policy during his “retirement” from CIA was of interest to the Bullock people…

            As of September 17, it appears from datebook entries that Pierre Lafitte and his wife Rene are in New York City for a brief stay. This follows a September 16 entry in which Pierre wrote “Set-up complete.” On October 2, another very odd entry appears in Dulles’s phone log. “Mr. Hunt – Figure AWD interested in is ’42.’” This may, of course have to do with Dulles’s recently published book, but it is unusual, and looks to be coded communication from Hunt to AD.

            The record of an October 10 phone call to Dulles was redacted—blacked out—with the only surviving markings being exclamation marks on both ends of the black-out, certainly a provocative look. Dulles met with Papich of FBI on this date, as well as having lunch with Frank Wisner. On October 11, the notation “Two calls redacted” appears. This comes two days after a lengthy Lafitte datebook entry in which Pierre lays out what looks to be a great many particulars that pertain to the upcoming assassination of Kennedy. On October 16, Dulles signed a copy of Craft of Intelligence for “Bob Nichols,” presumably the financial reporter for the Los Angeles Times, Robert Nichols, which aligns with reports that Dulles made a whirlwind, forty-eight-hour DC/LA round trip jaunt, landing him in DC Thursday, October 17. On October 18, Angleton calls Dulles, for the first time in nearly four months. 

            As noted, Lafitte, in a critically important datebook entry dated October 17, wrote “JA call yest. Says High-level gathering in D.C. Lancelot – GO – OK…” 

            On October 19 and 20, there are no recorded communications with Mr. Dulles. On October 17, a Dallas newspaper had announced the arrival of Dulles for book promotional events, and a Dulles address at the Dallas Council on World Affairs scheduled for October 28. One does not need to speculate unduly to come to the conclusion that something of clandestine importance was being attended to during this time period by Mr. Dulles. In light of this meshing of calls and activity, it may not be surprising that “by October 1963, Dulles felt confident enough to speak out against Kennedy’s foreign policy in public, ignoring the Washington etiquette that deemed it bad form to criticize a president whom you had recently served,” as Talbot writes. 

            Prior to the arrival of Dulles in Texas, two phone calls from the previous month should be noted. On September 17, Dulles’s secretary phoned Canon Martin of St. Albans school, and regretfully informed him that, through an error, AWD would be unable to fulfill a previously scheduled October 24 commitment at the renowned D.C. private school, due to the fact that Dulles had an overriding scheduled appearance in Houston on that date. Mr. Martin “was very kind,” and said that he planned to call Mrs. Wilkinson, with whom the initial arrangement had apparently been made. 

            Either Martin, or Dulles’s secretary, phoned Mrs. Wilkinson, who expressed surprise at the cancellation, saying that “she couldn’t understand how the error had occurred, since she had a letter from Harper’s confirming the date and she also knew that AWD had to be in Princeton on the evening of October 24…” Mrs. Wilkinson said she would attempt to change the date of the Dulles appearance to October 31. “We are to call…if this date is satisfactory…although there is a possibility the date cannot be changed,” wrote Dulles’s secretary. The following day, Dulles agreed to an appearance at a book fair at St Albans on October 31. In the context of Dulles’s forthcoming trip and other significant time-line events, it seems likely that Dulles’s priorities for October were distinctly different than they had been months before. 

            On October 25, Dulles arrived in Houston for the first leg of his Texas book promotional tour. Dulles’s Texas itinerary—Houston to Ft. Worth to Dallas—would mirror the schedule of President Kennedy less than a month later. The Texas visit, presumably due to an invitation from his old Dallas friend Neil Mallon, was the only “non-coast” appearance Dulles would make in support of the book. Talbot writes: “Dulles often used speaking engagements and vacations as cover for serious business, and his detour through Texas bears the markings of such a stratagem.” Also on October 25, Lafitte noted “Call JA Wash D.C. - O says - done - Oswald set in place - call Walker & others.” 

            Dulles would deliver the promised address to Mallon’s DCWA, after spending the 27^th in Ft. Worth, with only a speech made to the “Friends of the Fort Worth Library” recorded in his diaries. He returned to Washington D. C. on October 29. On Monday, October 28, and on the following day, Lafitte—who moved easily between his home in New Orleans and Dallas in 1963—entered only the words “Lancelot Planning” in his datebook. Detailed planning for the forthcoming murder of JFK was on the agenda. 

            Dulles began November ’63 with a meeting with Frank Wisner, and a two-hour visit to the Tunisian Embassy on November 5. On November 12, Dulles resumed an old pattern, having lunch with Howard Roman. November 13 featured a meeting with NASA’s golden boy, Wernher Von Braun, who had smoothly moved from providing creative expertise for Adolf Hitler’s rocket technology to doing the same for the American military establishment during the height of the Cold War. On November 14, Tracy Barnes called AD, for the first (recorded) time since April 1 of ’63. The description of the call notes that the two men discussed “the Praeger project,” and that, in itself, would not seem surprising, since Barnes was handling contact with the CIA-subsidized publisher by that time, and since Dulles was still in frequent contact with Praeger.

            If, however (as I have argued elsewhere) Tracy Barnes was the mysterious “T” in Lafitte’s datebook, it is striking that this call was made to Dulles on the day in which “T” engaged in what was an extremely important meeting regarding the rapidly approaching murder of JFK. On November 14, “T” met personally with a crucial cog in the “on the ground” planning for the Dallas event: Jack Crichton, a man who Dulles’s old friend Col. Albert Haney would describe as being a vitally important part of the JFK assassination. Barnes would contact Dulles again on November 18, the day in which a threat against the life of President Kennedy was uncovered in Tampa, Florida.

            Dulles was addressing a Brookings Institution breakfast meeting on November 22, 1963 in Williamsburg, Virginia. After the Dallas shooting, he headed immediately to the northern Virginia countryside, where he would spend the weekend at a top-secret CIA facility known officially as Camp Peary, but referred to within CIA as “The Farm.” As CIA director, Dulles had created what Talbot describes as “a comfortable home” at The Farm. As an active participant in numerous Agency affairs two years after his forced “retirement,” Dulles was still welcome there. As former House Assassinations Committee investigator Dan Hardaway told Talbot: “The Farm was basically an alternative CIA headquarters, from where Dulles could direct ops.” It is not entirely clear from Hardaway’s quote whether he was referring to Dulles’s role in the Agency when he had been formerly in charge, or what was, in 1963, a continuation of his power and influence by less formal means. As has been strongly suggested by a journey through Dulles’s contacts and activities during 1962 and 1963, there seems to have been little substantive difference between the two time periods, at least not to Mr. Dulles and his acolytes.

            November 26 brought a call from President Lyndon Johnson, who was very interested in appointing Dulles to the investigative body that would become known as the Warren Commission. Dulles graciously accepted the position as one of the seven commissioners who would oversee the inquiry; a position that Dulles confidante William Corson later told author Joe Trento that Dulles had “lobbied hard for.” Dulles told Johnson that “I would like to be of any help.” Dulles’s protégé Richard Helms, then CIA Deputy Director of Plans, would allegedly tell historian Michael Kurtz that he had personally persuaded LBJ to appoint Dulles, but it is doubtful that the President needed much persuading on this count. 

            Dulles would throw himself into the job, becoming the Commissioner who attended the highest percentage of WC sessions. Dulles began preparation for the establishment slant that he would bring to the Commission quickly. A December 2 phone contact shows Dulles requesting multiple copies of Isaac Don Levine’s The Mind of an Assassin, Levine’s study of the Kremlin-dispatched murderer of Leon Trotsky. Readers will remember from the epilogue of this book, the datebook entry penned by Pierre Lafitte on November 28, 1963: “Levine will deal with Marina…” 

            December 5, 1963 is a date that resonates historically, both on the surface, and in the back-story provided by the datebook of Pierre Lafitte. The first meeting of the Warren Commission was held, on a day in which Dulles spoke with DDP Richard Helms, and Lafitte recorded the essence of a personal conversation with CIA Counterintelligence head James Angleton in a datebook entry: “JA (Close out Lancelot), with a reference to “T” as well. 

            Allen Dulles would take the stage as the most active member of the Warren Commission, with the intent of wrapping up the investigation of Kennedy’s assassination without drawing undue attention to personnel or operations connected to CIA. Dulles would chat with Angleton on December 11—a “power call” day in which Dulles also talked with Prescott Bush and Dick Helms—confirming a dinner meeting between the two men on December 12, a meeting which likely had to do with the same topic of discussion that occupied Angleton when he spoke with Lafitte a week before. In mid-December, Dulles would be communicating again with CIA DCI McCone, this time pointing toward a forthcoming California meeting.

            Among the many portions of Dulles’s call and appointment diaries that are blacked out, a December entry stands out as being particularly odd. On December 6, a day in which Dulles had one more of the frequent conversations he enjoyed during this time period with Frank Wisner, an entry reads: “REDACTED reported that a group of Air Force officers had planned to try to impeach President Kennedy before next re-election. AWD advised he report to FBI…REDACTED.” As is the case with many of Dulles’s calls and plans during the period of time that he was supposedly out of power, one would like to know more about this. Who made the allegation, where did this person get the information, and whether the word “impeach” should be taken literally, or whether it masks another activity that might have been considered. But Allen Dulles, nor those he moved within close proximity to, were not concerned with abstractions such as the “right to know.” Dulles moved quietly down back-channels of a world he helped to create, and we do the best we can with what is left to us of his life and times.

6 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

Dulles nor the OAS, e.g., Souetre and many others were not happy with JFK's words six years before his death.

Remarks of Senator John F. Kennedy in the Senate, Washington, D.C., July 2, 1957 | JFK Library

Did Dulles take his cue from TIME Magazine's headline when he prepped for his speech before the World Affairs Council in Dallas just ten days later?: 

Algeria: The Cuba of Africa

3 minutes ago, Matt Allison said:

That makes total sense. 

I certainly wish Peter Navarro would be charged, but my understanding is that it's Jason Miller.

Genuinely hope I'm wrong...

1 hour ago, Matt Allison said:

The co-conspirators are Jason Miller, Jeffrey Clark, Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman and one other lawyer.

With regard to Fox News, they need to be sued out of existence.

They are lying to the American people so purposely now that they have become a national security threat.

I read that Kenneth Chesebro is #5?  Texas attorney. He leads to at least four Texas characters who were involved in developing the scheme; one is from Dripping Springs, home of Willie's Fourth years ago. 

And Navarro is the public relations guy?

1 hour ago, Paul Brancato said:

I always find this kind of picking one sentence or another to respond to without taking account of the entirety of what I said less than satisfactory. You didn’t respond to large portions, the most important of which is my encouragement to take a more collaborative approach.
I presume you don’t know why Ganis hasn’t shared his Skorzeny papers with the research community. 
You are not listed as a co-author of Coup in Dallas. The first time you said that you considered yourself one was in response to a previous post of mine which, like this one, was written to express some empathy with you, to try to explain why you may be defensive or feel attacked. 
Your initial response to Greg D, shortly after publication and on the first Forum thread you initiated, was that he had an ulterior motive for asking a perfectly legitimate question, which you can see is on the minds of most everyone. That is not collaborative, and the response down the road has not been a good one for you. I stand by what I said then, and now, and wish you would backpedal a bit. I’m not your enemy as you well know, and my primary motive is to help you, not criticize.
My last question - the WHY of Lafitte writing a diary or datebook - is perhaps too difficult to answer prior to authentication, but it is an important one. 
What is the current status of authentication efforts? 

I don't know why Ganis hasn't shared his Skorzeny papers.

You are not listed as a co-author of Coup in Dallas.

I am co-author of Coup in Dallas as noted in the joint-work copyright.  Please review the title page which Hank submitted with the prelim draft in April 2019 that appears in the Front Matter of Coup. 


The first time you said that you considered yourself one was in response to a previous post of mine which, like this one, was written to express some empathy with you, to try to explain why you may be defensive or feel attacked. 

I'm surprised by this, Paul.  We have communicated periodically since Hank's passing, and I am fairly certain I've walked you through, both by phone and email, the circumstances of Hank first contacting me to ask if I would co-author the book, my reticence at appearing on the front cover in spite of his insistence (I won that argument), and the struggle to see this book published against a number of odds even I was shocked by after he died.

That is not collaborative, and the response down the road has not been a good one for you.

I have and intend to continue to collaborate with those who can hold two concepts - perhaps opposing - at the same time: i.e., IF the datebook is legitimate, where do Lafitte's notes lead.  

was that he had an ulterior motive for asking a perfectly legitimate question,

I questioned why anyone would review a 700+ page book — just 10 days after publication — based on a 5-6 page co-author's statement specific to provenance and authenticity without mention of the revelations in the narrative of Hank's investigation let alone  his personal  introduction which lays out provenance and arguments for authenticity.  Anyone that chose that approach — not dissimilar to Fred Litwin's I might add — had to have a "motive." Have you ever wondered why Greg won't actually discuss Hank's investigation? Why didn't Greg contact the living coauthor to question the authenticity face to face as it were?

I’m not your enemy as you well know, and my primary motive is to help you, not criticize.

I've always considered this an investigation into the murder in Dallas, and have approached pubic discourse with that focus. It's not personal for me, and I trust you have a similar philosophy.

the WHY of Lafitte writing a diary or datebook - is perhaps too difficult to answer prior to authentication, but it is an important one. 
What is the current status of authentication efforts? 

Authentication won't reveal the WHY of Lafitte maintaining a daily record.  I've heard at least a half-dozen theories, none of which are necessarily persuasive.  Why did Hunter-White keep notes; why did Win Scott maintain what I'm led to believe were diaries beginning in the early 1950s (and WHERE are those diaries?); why did Robert G. Storey keep a daily account of his experience during Nuremberg; why have I kept notebooks for decades?

The current status of authentication is, as I've shared several times on various threads on this forum, incomplete.

3 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

The co-conspirators identified, to date, are Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, and Sidney Powell.

I'm wondering about Michael Flynn and Roger Stone.

There are also reports that the DOJ has evidence that Mark Meadows was in contact with Oath Keepers and Proud Boys during the January 5th Willard Hotel "War Room" conference (that Cassidy Hutchinson advised Meadows not to attend.)

my bet on the political guy is Roger Stone as well.

Nope. Apparently odds are on Peter Navarro.

Hallelujah for the Rule of Law

@Ed Berger there may be something applicable to our recent discussion here:
 

Dick Russell provides a limited analysis of the primary source material of Albarelli's last investigation.  if you continue reading, James Angleton is germane to the discussion of his former boss, DCI Allen Dulles' alleged Weekend At The Farm:

Dick Russell: ANGLETON: Listed in the datebook by his last name as well as initials (JA and JJA), the then-head of Counterintelligence for the CIA appears to have been involved in “high-level gathering in DC'' during which “Lancelot planning” was discussed. The Lancelot reference is to a plot to kill JFK. The datebook’s final mention of James Angleton,(December 5, 1963) states: “JA – CLOSE OUT LANCELOT.” Angleton’s name was not generally known until the mid-1970s, when he was forced out of the CIA following revelations that he’d organized an illegal domestic spying program. 

Albarelli / Sharp:  

. . . After the war, having immigrated to the US, Clifford Forster ran the American Friends of Paix et Liberté designed to counter the propaganda of the French Communist Party. He later formed several similarly aggressively anti-communist committees in the US focused exclusively on threats to French colonial dominance in Algeria. By 1960, he was chairman/cofounder of The American Committee for France and Algeria, launching a bulletin similar to Willoughby's Foreign Intel Digest called Integration, the preferred term of fascist sympathizers to define the resolution of the Algerian question. Forster wrote, “. . . [we] believe that, in the interests of humanity and Western civilization, American policy as well as that of our allies will be best served by an Algeria integrated with France.” (Sept. 1960—emphasis added) 

            By 1961, President John Kennedy was taking a different position which strongly favored Algerian independence from France.

            Forster had argued, “The importance of Algeria and indeed all of North Africa to the defense of Western Europe cannot be underestimated. . . . These are the simple strategic facts involved in the global struggle between East and West. . . .” 

            A close read of Forster’s analysis of “the importance of Algeria . . .” exposes a far less noble motive. Referring to Oil, Gas & Chemical Service, June 8, 1959, Forster alerts his readers that the petroleum industry publication sounded the warning in these terms: “Recent exploratory successes in North Africa and the development of sizable oil reserves in Algeria have directed attention to the entire northern part of the continent of Africa. The vigorous exploration and development of oil reserves in the Sahara Desert areas of Algeria will bring France into the ranks of important oil producing nations….” Intentional or not, Forster was transparent: rightful independence of Algerians hinged on dominance over the country’s natural resources.      Reflecting on the 1952 “Meadows - Skorzeny” scheme launched in Franco’s Spain compels researchers to wonder how the discovery of vast oil reserves in the Sahara factored into the long-range projections of Texas independent oilmen.

       Among the far-right propaganda outlets touted by Clifford Forster’s Integration were those published by Kent Courtney, an active member of the White Citizens Council, and the John Birch Society (JBS). A critical aspect of what appears on the surface as a loosely knit network, which in retrospect surfaces as a powerful worldwide ideological movement, was the American Opinion Speakers Bureau, promoted by the JBS. That stable of speakers included Clifford Forster, featured speaker at Billy James Hargis' annual “Christian Crusade” convention held in Dallas in 1964, just months after the assassination. Forster was Otto Skorzeny's business friend. As noted previously, Christian Crusade was wrapped up in the Congress of Freedom identified in the Lafitte datebook.

       Apparently, Algeria was still on the mind of former director of the CIA, Allen Dulles in October 1963. In so many words, Dulles agreed with Forster that despite Algerian independence secured in 1962, capitalism writ large was not served by that major political shift on the African continent. During his trip to Dallas, October 28/29—the forty-eight-hour period critical to "Lancelot Planning," according to Pierre Lafitte—the dynamics in Algeria dominated Dulles’s speech before the Dallas Council on World Affairs.

. . . On October 17th—one day before James Angleton told Pierre Lafitte that there had been a high-level gathering in DC, the Dallas Morning News published a brief announcement, “Former CIA Boss Sets Dallas Talk.” The story read: “Allen W. Dulles, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency will address a meeting of the Dallas Council on World Affairs at noon on Monday, October 28, in the Baker Hotel . . .” Neil Mallon, a member of the board of Republic National Bank had been a friend and confidant of Allen Dulles throughout Dulles’s tenure as director of Central Intelligence. It was through Dulles’s prompting that Mallon founded the Dallas chapter of the Council on World Affairs, an invaluable instrument for the agency since 1951 and the perfect venue on October 28, 1963, for Dulles to promote his book and speak on national security issues including reference to specific activity in hot spots around the world, suggesting he was being briefed in spite of his having left the agency in 1961. The Dallas chapter of the Independent Petroleum Association of America also held their monthly meeting on October 28th.

            On October 27th, the Dallas Morning News followed up and announced that oil expert Jack Crichton, having recently returned from an oil tour of Romania, would present his report to the Petroleum Engineers on the following Friday, November 1st. 

            On October 29th, Kent Biffle of the Dallas Morning News published a summation of Allen Dulles’s speech the night before under the headline, “Allen Dulles Looks Behind Red Moves”: “Khrushchev announced he ‘isn’t going to the moon next week’ to foil the Kennedy plan for a joint moon effort.” Dulles said, ‘Russians are arming Algerian troops in hopes of finally gaining a solid foothold in Africa . . . The Soviets have been trying for ten to fifteen years to find the foothold they want in Africa. They tried in Egypt, the Congo, Guinea and Ghana.’” Biffle continued, “Dulles said that in arming the Algerians against the Moroccans, the Reds are again trying to find a satisfactory foothold in Africa.” We should underscore here that as DCI Allen Dulles had been a frequent visitor to the hotels and homes of numerous close friends in Dallas, Texas, including of course Mallon. Indeed, some people close to the CIA director would quietly remark that Dallas had become an important base of operations for the CIA, second only to headquarters in Langley, Virginia. (See Endnote.)

            Dulles’s October 28th talk before Mallon’s Dallas Council on World Affairs further tilled the soil when he included reference to the Algerians’ fight for independence—a subject close to the heart of this book. The speech was a companion piece to other recent impassioned anti-communist pleadings at various venues around the city including those of the woeful, anti-Red princess from Romania. Jack Crichton’s report to Dallas petroleum executives—scheduled within days of Dulles’s speech at the DCWA—recapped his Romanian oil tour which most assuredly described the plight of that country under The Reds, planting propaganda and stoking the anti-communist fires in Dallas. Crichton’s talk was just four days prior to Lafitte making a note, Meet with Crichton at Tech building.

Returning to the nuts and bolts, 

By September 12, the name Askins has surfaced in Lafitte's realm.  Charles "Boots" Askins, notorious award-winning marksman and fire-arms expert is under consideration.

Two days later, the name Canon appears for the first time.  Cactus Jack Canon, a Texas-born trained marksman who ran Gen. Willoughby's "K. Org." in Korea, is on the radar for Lancelot Project, the plan to murder Kennedy in Dallas.

Wedged between these two references is the name Rudel.  The prime candidate is SS Stuka Pilot Hans-Ulrich Rudel who had recently filed one of dozens of visa applications he sought during the Cold War.  He was declined, and then suddenly, overnight, the visa was approved so that he could attend a conference at Wright Patterson slated for the first quarter of October.

On 7/24/2023 at 7:11 PM, Benjamin Cole said:

I think it remains in our best interest to assume it is authentic and proceed from there with verification of content--DJ

DJ---We are on different pages on this one.

I would like to see a seasoned board of independent, objective document examiners and JFKA experts review the properly sequestered datebook, without fear or favor. 

I am entirely open to the idea of the CIA making heavy use of Nazis and former Nazis, and that such elements may have run their own ops, through devious methods, or lack of good oversight. 

Side note: Bill Harvey suffered from hubris (to put it mildly). Also alcoholism. He might be the sort of exception who violates even mediocre spy-craft. I doubt Harvey was a good spy or anything else. 

 

 

Benjamin, as noted elsewhere, a number of JFKA experts have held the datebook; among them, a select few have the full PDF of the entries.  They are all currently bound by Non-Disclosure. We anticipate a softcover edition of Coup, after which the NDA will be lifted, unless and until the authentication process is completed first, at which time every skeptic will have to deal with their unfounded "skepticism" as they see fit. 

On 7/24/2023 at 7:12 PM, Ron Bulman said:

Paul, maybe you've seen this by now but this is from the first page of this thread about 2/3 of the way down.  I don't remember seeing it in Coup.  There are more relevant comments about this as the post goes on, and, a few more throughout the thread.  As I understand it now, there were two notes to JJA from Laffite.  Leslie has a fading, delicate copy of one, a copy of the other, the one on the first page is somewhere in Hank's files.  It talks about not using Cubans as shooters, an assassin named Ostrich who was not used.  This was after the assassination.

Maybe Leslie will correct me or elaborate.

From: Hank Albarelli  
Date: January 16, 2019 at 7:06:54 AM EST
To: dickr
Subject: Note to Angleton

There's a very interesting post-assassination note to Angleton from Lafitte (this from [you] the Angleton family member)

that points up two things: there was an assassin referred to as "Ostrich" that Lafitte agrees w/Angleton as being very good

(but seemingly not used in Dallas) and Lafitte agrees w/Angleton on the merits of having not used cubans in "direct

capacities." I'm pretty certain I knoqw who Ostrich is/was but will only say once I'm absolutely there.

 

Sorry, Ron.  I thought I had responded to this; perhaps on another thread?

I shared Hank's note in response to the hypothesis that a large cadre of Cuban nationals might have played significant roles in Dallas.  I think the note speaks for itself, but I'm glad to expand on it if you're interested.

We've since identified a primary candidate for OSTRICH, from a document dated mid 1940s which references both Otto Skorzeny and Gerard Litt - LaMalice and LaCagoule, and identified in Pierre Lafitte's 1963 datebook.

On 7/30/2023 at 9:49 PM, Ron Bulman said:

I've been going to note somewhere for several days something I came across in the end notes for A Secret Order.  Chapter Two, pg. 431.  "Authors files, authors interviews with Phen Laffite, Miami, 1999-2007."

I'm guessing this is Pierre's son?  So, Hank remained on cordial enough terms to maintain ongoing interviews with Phen for eight years.  Maybe a level of trust developed over that time between them.

It seems Hank wasn't in the search for the Truth for short term fame or fortune.

Ron, that was my experience of Hank.  The producer of the anticipated documentary based on Coup in Dallas told me, and Hank, that he believed Hank would win a Pulitzer. Not only did it not phase Hank, he scoffed.  He was the personification of humility, and I assure you, he didn't achieve financial fortune in his lifetime; his fortune was a  profession he was committed, respect of his peers, and his loving family including those grandsons he was utterly besotted by.

Phen, as noted also in several references in ATM, was his primary source following Rene Lafitte's death in 2000.  So, he interacted with her over the next 18 years; it was as I said, a fragile dynamic because she was only honoring Rene's wishes and not entirely enthusiastic about the project herself.

3 minutes ago, Jonathan Cohen said:

It's just non-stop victim mentality from the Coup in Dallas brigade, isn't it? "Acting on behalf of" Jim DiEugenio? On behalf of what? Our top-secret cabal that goes around jealously spying on other Kennedy assassination researchers? Give me a break.

You know nothing of this dynamic.  The exchange only scratches the surface.

Hank was hardly a victim; he was an astute, experienced, long-term observer of human nature, particularly that of "the research community."

I'll just leave this here.

. . . I met Lisa Pease once in LA when I was there for an event related to my book on Frank Olson. . . . She sought me out in LA and tried to pump me on Pierre Lafitte, but I had no interest in sharing anything with her. I was told she was acting on behalf of DiEugenio.

DiEugenio [and Pease] have locked themselves into a box on the assassination and I suspect they will live to regret it, but I'm sure their combined pathology will attempt to slam many more people before that occurs.
 
 My best,
 
 Hank 

On 7/30/2023 at 9:16 PM, Ed Berger said:

@Leslie Sharp

I'm fairly certain we didn't refer to the flight; I think the story involves David Ferrie and Carlos Marcello. It blends into the Winnipeg bar story, and gets even murkier when Souetre is alleged to have gotten drunk and spilled the beans.  Too hard to nail down, BUT, if you've come across Winnipeg native Burt Sucharov (sp?? writing from memory here) in Coup yet, and his alleged tie to John Wilson-Hudson . . . 

Ah, I might be mis-remembering then... I'll have to go back on my notes and check out what I had on Cuba and Freeport nickel affairs that linked up to Canada. And to be quite honest Burt Sucharov was totally unknown to me until reading CiD. There's an interesting story I did come across concerning Sucharov, that he moved 1500 surplus rail cars from Canada's War Assets Administration to Argentina in 1945. This was via a company he was involved with called Sumac, where he was joined by one Andrew MacNaughton. MacNaughton seems to have become a somewhat notorious arms dealer in the Caribbean and Latin America; there's an article about him lodged in Mitch WerBell's security file.

I'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.

I don't think we nailed down McNutt with WCC.  That would be most interesting.

I've come across McNutt as a figure within the WCC itself, but I'm still working on confirming that—there's a ton of WCC materials in the Edward Stettinius papers archive that I'm hoping to get at soon, which should yield some great stuff in all directions. But at the very least we can say that McNutt was definitely involved in a WCC 'adjunct' company. In this case, the Philippine American Finance and Development Company. This was a venture dedicated to gold and other precious metals mining in the Philippines, with Stettinius a key player, along with McNutt's often business partner Joseph Hirshhorn (who was involved in funny stock deals of his own). 

I need to refresh my memory of Fassoulis.

Tomorrow afternoon or so I'll post some of my Fassoulis notes in the WCC/JFK thread you made the other day. 

 I think I shared that Hilton is named in Lafitte's ledger, along with Rosser Reeves who was a brother-in-law of Ogilvie, an original signature of World Commerce if we're not mistaken? 

The fact that Hilton is in the ledger is HUGE imo (and would also narrow the gap with other important figures, like Frank Brandstetter). And wow, I had no idea that Reeves was the brother-in-law of David Ogilvy. But yeah Ogilvy was at WCC in its foundation, back when it was known as the British American Canadian Corporation. In fact, the Ogilvy papers at the Library of Congress has BACC/WCC materials... another item on the long list of things to try and grab.

Have you looked into the stolen bonds scheme?  Cuban / American mercenaries seem fond of them as income streams? I could never figure out why.  And worked with the hypothesis that Otto and Ilse opted for nickel bonds rather than suitcases of money.

Definitely come across all sorts of funny business with the paper generated by the metals trade. Certificates and the like of precious metals—gold and silver, chiefly—are a favorite instrument of money laundering for drug traffickers and all manner of underworld denizens. There's various reasons for this, but part of it has to do with logistics. A slip of paper is easier transported than a suitcase of money, and the metal that the paper represents can be easily translated into any currency on the planet and back again. And all the while, the physical stockpile of metal can be exchanged any number of times without ever having to be moved the vault where it's sitting, because it is really the proof of ownership that is circulating instead.

One of the guys who helped innovate these mechanisms was Nicholas Deak, OSS veteran and lifelong CIA asset.

Are you seeing heroin, cocaine, the Corsicans, in this scenario? It has been posited that the Rat Lines served more than one purpose.

Absolutely!! On the one hand, the flourishing postwar drug trade catalyzed a lot of the metal scheming (which eventually drove thing to the point where drug traffickers were buying up metal mines—or perhaps this was there in the beginning...). On the other hand, the huge profit revenues of the trade were frequently laundered into investments in 'legitimate' businesses. It will take some thrashing out, but I believe this is what was happening in the case of David Baird's securities dealing foundations. Pealing that back shows a bewildering circulation of stock purchases, swaps, and sales by a high number of players in even more companies. It certainly looks like some form of money laundering on a massive scale taking place. And when you have Conrad Hilton participating in that, William Zeckendorf of Great Southwest participating, Floyd Odlum of Atlas Corporation participating...

The banker who ran all of that was Serge Semenenko, formerly of First National Bank of Boston, a man who knew both George de Mohrenschildt and Frank Brandstetter. He managed it all in accounts at Marine Midland, located at 120 Broadway, the Equitable Trust building in New York City. This is the same building where Empire Trust had it's HQ. 

Here's an interesting message from Floyd Odlum concerning the delivery of Atlas Corporation stock to David Baird, to be used as collateral for a promissory note. It's a really neat document: the man who Odlum addresses it to is none other than our familiar friend Stafford Sands.

Nailing this down seems very pertinent to me, since it never stopped and has only ballooned. There's the unforgettable charge made in 2009 by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime that during the 2008 financial crisis, major global banks were soaking up drug money as a source of liquid investment capital when all other capital streams were frozen. 

Some argue the Order of St. John is not the Knights of Malta; my history says they are one and the same.

You know, it's interesting: I have a friend who is a real OSJ watcher who started off being skeptical of the claim that the OSJ was affiliated with the 'real' Knights of Malta, due to the apparent non-existence of the Russian lineage that they cite. But after amassing a large number of internal OSJ documents over the years, he has come to believe that IS connected to the real K of M, albeit in a different manner than what they state. 

On the topic of weird metal stuff, he's shown me a document from one OSJ man's archival papers, discussing the induction of one of Willoughby's boys from the Philippines into the order. The person in question is described as the world's expert on Yamashita's Gold, or something along those lines. 

Gonna read what you posted from the paperback edition now! 
 

Ed, I was halfway through with my response and it disappeared.

Will recreate soon.

This is an intriguing line of inquiry.

On 7/31/2023 at 1:05 PM, Paul Brancato said:

I’m going to jump in here. I did make my own position clear by defending Greg’s questions as important and well meaning. I value Mr. Joseph’s contributions to the JFK research community greatly, but find it hard to see why he is arguing so vociferously against the posters who are harping on the issue of authentication. I’m a bit more inside than most of you in that I communicated with Hank several times on his research, not on the Lafitte diaries, before his untimely passing. I think Leslie feels a certain imperative because she was a close associate of Hank’s and worked like hell to get the book finished. I’ve asked her publicly not to take umbrage at Greg and others for their questions. She feels, rightly or wrongly, attacked. I too wish, and have stated, that I’d like to see her take a more collaborative approach. I know she has tried to get the diaries authenticated. She is apparently keeping some cards close to her vest because of legal issues. She has a lot at stake. For the sake of all, let’s try giving her a pass while we ask her to be less dogmatic. 
Robert Montenegro has stated publicly that he used the datebook entries as clues to research, and he has certainly started many deeply intriguing threads. We should not look at his work as an attempt to corroborate authenticity. He stated in that regard that he finds it hard to understand why a fake would yield such pertinent results. But he is not staking his work or credibility on authenticity of the diaries. 
One important issue I am concerned about is the accuracy of Hank Albarelli’s research into Jean Pierre Lafitte and George Hunter White. I wish all of us would separate this from the authenticity issue. I’d like Leslie to help here by addressing the issue of Hank’s source material. One cannot read the fascinating chapters on these two without wanting to know where Hank sourced the material. He often quotes, without quotation marks, things that Lafitte said. There is in my opinion a need to know this, because Lafitte is someone we need to know about. Again, without asking whether he was the organizer of the Assassination per the Datebook, who was he? Did Clay Shaw hire him as a chef? Did he and independent journalist James Phelan break into Garrison’s files and steal documents? I believe the source here is Phelan himself. 
The other only partly resolved issue is what happened between Major Ganis and Hank Albarelli? And as Leslie pointed out, why hasn’t Ganis released his Skorzeny documents for authentication and opened them up to researchers? But I will point out here that whatever the case is on this author’s split up, Robert has found much on Skorzeny, and we should want to get to the bottom of the research into genuine Nazi collusion with CIA operations. It’s very extensive, provable. What is the connection between JMWAVE officers and Reinhardt Gehlen? Here I would ask people like Greg, and Tom, who are clearly thoughtful researchers, as well as Jim D, Bill Simpich and others, to take a moment or two, forget the diaries for a while, and focus on Robert’s attempts to corroborate the explosive info that the diaries led him to uncover? In all this discussion I have heard very little from researchers on the Nazi links, despite some very convincing documentation. Is it too much to ask that you weigh in on this? 
My last question is why? If the diaries are really written by Lafitte in whole or even in part, why? I realize that without authentication it’s difficult to try to answer this. But it intrigues me. 
 

I think Leslie feels a certain imperative because she was a close associate of Hank’s and worked like hell to get the book finished

At the risk of my response to this comment being construed as "defensive", @Paul Brancato
once again, I began my research into the Kennedy assassination from Dublin, Ireland in 1993, when a former work colleague at Hunt family-owned Rosewood Hotels advised me to read Dick Russell's The Man Who Knew Too Much.

I spent large portions of the next two dozen years researching the Military-Industrial Complex in context of the assassination in Dallas.  In 2017, Hank Albarelli phoned to ask if I would co-author Coup with him.  So, to suggest that I am "defensive" solely on behalf of Hank, is factually inaccurate. This was a joint-work effort, picking up from Hank's extraordinary insight and gumshoe detective work to land access to some of the Lafitte private collection. I lay no claim to his decades long effort, but I take responsibility and accept accountability for having already accumulated the body of research and a solid grasp of the subject that this project required, at the right time, in the right place, in order to bring this book across the line for us both, along with Alan Kent.

 But he is not staking his work or credibility on authenticity of the diaries. 

As I've shared with Monté, I respect any and all who maintain a "wait and see" attitude toward the datebook; that said, I continue to wrestle with the logic of pursueing clues left by Lafitte, yet qualifying one's position on the authenticity, while presenting findings that originated from said clues.

The other only partly resolved issue is what happened between Major Ganis and Hank Albarelli? And as Leslie pointed out, why hasn’t Ganis released his Skorzeny documents for authentication and opened them up to researchers?

You may be at a disadvantage, Paul, or maybe you've forgotten because I'm fairly sure I explained the dissolution of the Ganis/Albarelli collaboration in a private email with you? I'm under no legal constraint to share publicly my first hand knowledge of why Hank didn't publish with Major Ganis.  In one of our first phone calls, he explained his concerns that the project might be headed in a direction that not only did he not agree with but that he was seriously uncomfortable overall. Maj. Ganis was approaching interpretation of their research through the lens that (paraphrasing here) Skorzeny was a friend of the West, and of democracy, and that in fact he was doing America a favor.   The issue culminated when the term "former" Nazi continued to surface in conversations, and ultimately Hank realized that Ganis wanted Skorzeny to be depicted as somewhat a hero. Hank's final words on the highly contentious issue: "Otto Skorzeny wasn't a "former" Nazi."


and focus on Robert’s attempts to corroborate the explosive info that the diaries led him to uncover?

To be clear, Monté doesn't represent Coup in Dallas; his attempts to corroborate some entries in the datebook have been amazing and it goes without saying how much I value his friendship, intelligence, his rugged independence, his courage, and his near savant skill sets: but, as he and I have discussed ad nauseam, they are pursued through a lens, as is natural for any of us.  Any conclusions he draws are based on his subjective interpretations of the datebook entries, and may or may not reflect Hank's investigation accurately or the material presented in  Coup or the forthcoming softcover edition.
 

On 7/31/2023 at 10:22 AM, Tom Gram said:

It hasn’t, and this thread makes it crystal clear that it probably never will.

Like Greg D. said, the responses to his comments in this thread are exactly what would be expected from a willful forgery operation. Greg Parker pointed out that Greg D. was effectively bullied into quitting.

 https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t2714p25-reality-checks#42423

The “situation”, as DJ calls it, is that the purveyors of the datebook are determined to immediately squash any discussion of authenticity and shift focus back to the datebook entries, which as Greg D. pointed out is a common modus operandi in forgery cases. 

This isn’t rocket science people. Until the datebook is authenticated beyond reasonable doubt by an uninterested expert third party, the datebook entries are beyond worthless as evidence. 

We don’t even have publicly accessible photographs of the entire datebook ffs. 

I will answer DJ’s ridiculous question about an authentic “seal of approval”. This is toddler level, bare-minimum due diligence, and any JFK researcher in their right mind should demand at least the following before accepting the datebook as anything more than another lame conspiracy scam in the tradition of JVB, James Files, and the McCone-Rowley memo. 

1. An independent scientific examination of the paper, ink, and handwriting of the datebook with the conclusion that all the entries were written by Pierre Laffite in 1963, with an accompanying report on the analysis that anyone can read. 

2. An open-access collection of HD images of the entire datebook. 

Instead of providing the above, or encouraging conversation and collaboration towards making it happen, the datebookers  have deflected with tactics ranging from semi-coherent word-salad to outright bullying, personal attacks, and accusing skeptics of being a cointelpro agent. Why should anyone have to put up with that sort of thing? The way Greg was treated in this thread is appalling.

Should we really just bend over and allow the Education Forum to be turned into an ongoing sales pitch for an almost certain forgery? The JFK research community has enough credibility problems already. Like Jeremy B. (I think?) said, do we really need a Hitler Diaries type forgery gaining traction leading up to the 60th anniversary? The question of authenticity is the only question that matters with this thing - and until the datebook is determined to be authentic beyond a reasonable doubt, I see no reason to not to treat the entire operation like a full-blown fraud at this point.

Kudos to Greg D. for exposing the problems with the datebook from almost day one, and continuing to expose the ridiculous and revealing behavior of its proponents. 

If the datebookers want to regain any semblance of credibility, they should 1) apologize to Greg; 2) take Greg’s advice and segregate information derived from credible sources from information derived from the datebook in all future posts, comments, essays, etc.;  3) demonstrate willingness, intent, and legitimate progress towards making the entire datebook publicly available in HD photographs, etc. and having the datebook examined by independent experts; and perhaps most importantly 4) demonstrate willingness to disavow the datebook if it is proven to be a fake. 

I am absolutely baffled by the sheer lack of skepticism by DJ and some of the other datebook defenders. This alleged datebook purports to be the most blatant evidence of conspiracy to ever pop up in the last 60 years, and yet here we have people uncritically gobbling up comically incriminating entries like “rifle into building” as if they actually mean something before establishing even a basic level of confidence that Lafitte actually wrote the damn thing, let alone wrote it in ‘63.

These questions about authenticity are not going away, and instead of jumping on anyone who raises the issue, questioning their motives, and bullying them into giving up, why not accept that the vast majority of reasonable observers are going to think that you are willfully peddling a fraud until you take steps to resolve the authenticity of the datebook beyond a reasonable doubt, and make the entire datebook accessible to the public? What’s so hard to understand about that? 

Should we really just bend over and allow the Education Forum to be turned into an ongoing sales pitch for an almost certain forgery? The JFK research community has enough credibility problems already.

You and active participants on EF are satisfied that after six decades, the salient progress in the cold case murder investigation — until now —  has been to establish that a single bullet didn't take the life of John Kennedy; that Oswald didn't fire from the 6th floor; and that a cast of thousands plotted, executed, and covered up the assassination?

5 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Yes, curiously, Ben started a duplicate thread on the subject of the Datebook's authenticity, while simultaneously recommending that duplicate threads on the subject should be consolidated... 🙄

 

Desperate moves by desperate ....😎

4 minutes ago, Jonathan Cohen said:

The only "wrench" it has thrown is further polluting a subject already rife with ridiculous theories and evidence-free speculation.

Promise?

I WAS speaking directly to Jim D.