29 minutes ago, Chris Barnard said:

Seems a nerve has been touched again. 

It was a direct reply to John. The clue is the fact that I quoted John. Keep up. 

So, this is a closed conversation on a public thread?  Why not just message one another privately?

6 minutes ago, Chris Barnard said:

Yep 

During the past week I have observed 3 different people, who could be the same animal. Linguistic choices may differ, the predictable reactionary responses are so similar. Each not aware of their flaws. All struggling with cognitive dissonance, all ignoring points, with the instinctive fight mechanism engaging. Two of such creatures directly engaging each other, completely oblivious that their opponent is a mirror image of themselves. 
 

There can be no upside to debating people like this. You will not convert or enlighten them, regardless of the evidence presented. They will only move, when their tribe deems it important to do so. There is something automated, or cult like about this, as if possessed, or programmed to produce a set outcome. Could they even comprehend the sigma, the autonomous free thinker, the independent? Could they imagine how such individuals cope, survive, or flourish without the support of the herd? Do they know what its like to feel free of fear? Do they understand that JFK was not a herd animal? Do they know that RFK wasn’t either? Is this why they hate RFK Jr? He chooses the path that is not well trodden, one which surely leads to persecution, suffering, derision, struggle etc. 

Are they worried RFK Jr will get elected and he’ll put people off the MMR jab or C19 jab, or that people will opt out of a future treatment when Gates has his 2025 SEARS virus? They’re not worried about people getting sterilised and killed off by food and environmental chemicals. They’re not worried about their sons getting sent to war. They’re not even worried about a nuclear exchange with Russia. Or the collapse of their financial systems and country with it. They’re worried as to whether RFK Jr will endorse the C19 jab or future jabs. I guess risk analysis isn’t of any use to these herd animals. 

 

There can be no upside to debating people like this. You will not convert or enlighten them, regardless of the evidence presented. 

Speaking of cognitive dissonance, one might ask why you felt compelled to pen a 300 word response when "there can be no be no upside"?

2 minutes ago, Marjan Rynkiewicz said:

I have already just an hour ago explained fully why Oswald said that he was a patsy.

I dont know anything about Lafitte & Co -- but for sure Oswald was not a part of any conspiracy.

Did he not have time to say during questioning, "and I saw this guy shoot Kennedy"?

The October 25 datebook entry indicates definitively that Oswald is the patsy, "— set in place."  

In the ensuing days, the details of the conspiracy to murder Kennedy in Dealey unfolded. Suggesting Oswald was oblivious is, on its face, illogical.

8 minutes ago, John Cotter said:

Everything political is viewed through the lens of tribal allegiance to one political party. Groupthink precludes logical engagement.

As Soren Kierkegaard described it:

“The truth. No; by nature man is more afraid of the truth than of death – and this is perfectly natural: for the truth is even more repugnant than death to man's natural being. What wonder, then, that he is so afraid of it? … for men is a social animal – only in the herd is he happy. It is all one to him whether it is the profoundest nonsense or the greatest villainy – he feels completely at ease with it, so long as it is the view of the herd, or the action of the herd, and he is able to join the herd.”

Projection coming from the tribe of Cotter, Barnard, Cole?

What I notice is that the moment anyone ventures into specifics with you, for instance Irish history in context of the assassination of RFK Jr's uncle who apparently you're convinced would release the records forthwith  —  he or she is met with psycho-babble.

For some reason (no doubt Kierkegaard might explain it to me?),  Gen. Leslie Groves — master of compartmentalization and architect of an intelligence revolution that took security measures to unprecedented heights — jumped to mind.

"What you see here, what you do here, what you hear here, when you leave here, let it stay here!" 

Groves controlled the project’s pace, priorities, and direction through his decisions. No one could travel from one site to another without the general’s permission. Knowledge was compartmentalized. Workers were told only what they needed to know and were forbidden to discuss their jobs with anyone other than designated supervisors. . . . 

I think that works as an effective analogy to describe your approach to vigorous discussion: either conform to your specification,  your psychoanalysis — your compartmentalization — or suffer the slings and arrows of Kierkegaard? 

 

28 minutes ago, Marjan Rynkiewicz said:

Oswald was a (half) patsy koz he did try to kill jfk with his 2 shots (at Z105 [in the past i have said Z113] & at Z218). Then as Oswald stood up & back from the window (& did not fire his last [third] bullet) he saw Hickey blow jfk's head off at Z313 -- hence Oswald did indeed know that he was a (half) patsy.

The CIA & FBI etc would have had zero influence on Hickey -- but might have had some kind of influence on Oswald earlier.

And of course if the SS wanted to cover up SSA Hickey's accidental homicide then yes Oswald was the perfect patsy.

But, Oswald was the perfect patsy for one main reason, & that reason is that Oswald was killed before Oswald could say much. If Oswald had gone to trial then he would not have been the perfect patsy -- i reckon that it would have emerged that Oswald did not blow jfk's head off -- in other words it would have emerged that Oswald scored zero out of 10 on the patsy scale.

If the police etc say did not find any rifle or casings in the TSBD etc, & if the police did not find the killer of Tippit, & if Oswald had not been caught or even suspected, & if Oswald carried on working at the TSBD as if nothing had happened, then there would have been no patsy. Or in other words the blame could be placed on persons unknown. Much better than having Oswald in the dock blabbing his head off about how he did not fire the headshot etc. 

The perfect patsy was actually persons unknown.

So, can you explain this again: Why did Oswald say, "I'm just a patsy"?  

And then perhaps you might be willing to discuss the following:
 

-see J. Dallas

T. says L.O. is ‘idiot‘

But w be used regardless

Set-up complete 

JW-H

—Lafitte datebook, September 16, 1963

Call JA Wash D.C.

O says - done - 

Oswald set in place 

call Walker & others

—Lafitte datebook, October 25, 1963

11 minutes ago, John Cotter said:

Mother of divine Jesus!

Interjection as deflection?

54 minutes ago, John Cotter said:

Matt, William, Leslie. Deflection, deflection, deflection.

It's no wonder the USA and the west are going down the toilet.

Do you really want to go there, John?

What is your position on Shannon Airport's complicity in the success of US the Military-Industrial Complex over decades? How might that have contributed to "the west" going down the toilet? Or, are you among those who have spent their lives protesting what is the equivalent of a US air base at Shannon? If you're a native of the North of Ireland, I have additional questions.

And I'm curious, speaking of decades of symbiosis, are you familiar with this history relevant to the assassination of President Kennedy?  Do you think Ireland should finally accept a degree of responsibility for indulging fascists and card carrying N(a)zis like Otto and Ilse Skorzeny? 

The New Irish Economy and the Elusive Francois Genoud

As revealed earlier, the US philanthropic arm of the global petroleum behemoth, Rockefeller Foundation provided the equivalent of $1.5 million in today’s dollars in search of the pure Aryan in Ireland. By 1960, Rockefeller consigliere John Jay McCloy was also representing American industrialist and avowed anti-Semite, Henry Ford in Ireland. The implications become even more relevant to Otto Skorzeny and his cabal’s proposal for Ireland’s economic strategy in the 1960s. “Skorzeny and two representatives of a German and a Swiss bank had protracted talks with members of the Irish Government and they promised to transfer considerable sums of capital to aid its economic development.”

            We also know from author Martin Lee that “rumors of Skorzeny’s presence in Germany or of his influence being felt in N(a)zi circles are intermittently heard,” McCloy wrote in a cable to President Kennedy’s Secretary of State, Dean Acheson.

            “There is a British Intelligence document dated 20 Nov 53, entitled ‘Francois GENOUD’ [Sic] which contains some background on this mysterious Swiss. It notes that he is the literary executor for both Hitler and Bormann and ‘possesses many N(a)zi documents.’ He is described as being in contact with British Fascist Sir Oswald Mosley at the time, as well as with Paul Dickopf (who would eventually become head of West Germany’s equivalent of the FBI, the BKA, despite his impeccable N(a)zi resume; indeed, he was even for a while a head of Interpol like his predecessor [and Skorzeny’s boss], Ernst Kaltenbrunner. Genoud worked for Dickopf in the Abwehr, and his credentials as an Abwehr agent are referenced in the British document, as well as his connection with Naumann Circle and with one Frau Lucht of Dusseldorf, which indicates the H.S. Lucht firm of Dusseldorf managed by Werner Naumann.” 

            Designated by Hitler as his titular heir, Naumann never relented from his commitment to resume the Reich in Germany, to the extent that he was arrested in 1953 and charged with attempting to infiltrate political parties. After his release, Naumann took charge of the H.S. Lucht Co. based in Dusseldorf, a firm that Otto would use as a front for years. The Lucht firm, along with Hjalmar Schacht’s Lombard Odier banking concern based in Dusseldorf, was a cornerstone for advancing schemes coming out of Bonn. No doubt it was through these business opportunities that Ilse Skorzeny had access to Princess Marbert, whom she pursued to purchase property near Martinstown House [County Kildare]. Also, critical during this time frame, were the tightly held negotiations between Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, Otto Skorzeny, and Dr. Wilhelm Voss who was then in Egypt pursuing efforts to collaborate with the Muslim brotherhood. Dealing with the Muslims was a feature for all of these players during the mid-1950s. By the late ’50s, the Republic of Germany and the US both were planning to flood the Irish economy. . . .
 

. . . In the early 1950s, [Sir Oswald] Mosley [British Union of Fascists] and his wife Diana Mitford had purchased Clonfert Palace, Co. Galway, Ireland—rumored to have been prompted by tax issues in the U.K.—where they resided until a fire in December 1954 gutted their home. Early in 1955, the Mosleys purchased the elegant Georgian house, Ileclash, built on an elevation over the Blackwater outside Fermoy, Co. Cork.

            Mosley married his second wife Diana Mitford—one of six Mitford sisters who captured the maelstrom of British and American press in their day—in 1936 in the Berlin home of National Socialist propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels with Adolf Hitler as one of the guests. Mosley, who would become a lifelong friend of N(a)zi Ulrich Rudel [who appears in the 1963 records of Pierre Lafitte], endorsed Hitler's policies following the outbreak of World War II led to his internment after which he was shunned by the British establishment. In a note of irony, Diana’s sister, Deborah married into the Cavendish family and eventually earned the rank of Dowager Duchess of Devonshire. Her brother-in-law, the Marquess of Hartington married Kathleen Kennedy, the older sister of John F. Kennedy. Lismore Castle, the seat of the Duke in Ireland, played host to the young senator Kennedy, a trip he frequently recalled with deep fondness. 

            Mosley and his wife, both unrepentant fascists to their deaths, were entrenched in the Republic of Ireland by the time Otto and Ilse Skorzeny began visiting the country. 

            From his base in Ileclash, in the late ’50s, Sir Oswald was spending increasing amounts of time mixing with aspirant neo-fascists in Europe and with the theorists of apartheid in South Africa. . . . 
 

US Ambassadors to Ireland

Within months of taking office, President Kennedy terminated the mission of America’s ambassador to Ireland under Eisenhower, R. W. Scott McLeod and replaced him with his good friend from Florida, Grant Stockdale. Kennedy had been one of the only senators who voted against McLeod’s nomination as ambassador in 1957. 

            Prior to the appointment by Eisenhower, McLeod, had served as head of the State Department’s Bureau for Security and Consular Affairs. A notorious homophobe and rabid anti-communist whose photo held a space on the desk of Senator Joseph McCarthy had worked closely with the senator’s red-baiting hearings, placing him in immediate proximity to mob lawyer Roy Cohn as well as Robert Morris, two of American’s staunchest anti-communists. We read about Robert Morris and his cohorts in Dallas in our next chapter. Scott McLeod presented his credentials in Dublin on July 17, 1957, just weeks after the Skorzenys were feted at Portmarnock. During his four-year tenure in Ireland, he had ample time to become acquainted with Otto and Ilse and their newfound friends in Ireland. 

            John Kennedy’s good friend Grant Stockdale presented his credentials in Dublin on May 17, 1961, just weeks after McLeod left the post. As ambassador, both McLeod and Stockdale’s duties included hosting formal and informal events for dignitaries and Ireland’s elite. At this juncture, it is worth repeating the history between Stockdale and Otto Skorzeny . . . : “Frequently attending these gatherings in all their splendor were Otto and Else Skorzeny. . . . Without doubt, Stockdale was amply familiar with former National Socialist SS officer Otto Skorzeny, who often visited the embassy for meetings with various American businessmen, military officers, and intelligence officials, as well as various embassy staff members throughout 1960, 1961, and 1962. Former embassy personnel vividly recall Skorzeny coming to the embassy on a near ‘weekly basis.’ Evidence also reveals that the Skorzenys were occasional dinner guests joining the ambassador and his wife. . . .”

            The ruggedly handsome forty-eight-year-old Florida businessman “fell to his death” from the 13^th floor of the DuPont Building in Miami, just ten days after his close friend John Kennedy was brutally taken down in Dallas. As noted previously, no author until now has identified Stockdale’s connections to Otto and Ilse Skorzeny and the possible impact of those connections on his untimely death. 

            With few exceptions, up until the 1990s, all US ambassadors to Ireland had backgrounds in either the military or intelligence (and often both), and/or served on the boards of military contractors. 

@John Cotter  I don't know how much you know about the Democratic Party in the U.S., or whether you ever registered to vote here, but as a lifelong Dem I think I'm on solid ground in saying that if RFK Jr. even hints at normalizing the Trump years he will not win the Dem nomination. The optics alone standing with Mike Flynn and Roger Stone have already disqualified him in the minds of millions of Democratic voters.  

And if he goes near any attempt to defend or rationalize the GOP record laid out here by W. Niederhut, he will be dismissed out of hand, especially by the progressive wing of his party.

1)  Which political party has been systematically trying to suppress voting in the U.S. during the past decade?

2)   Which political party has stacked the U.S. Supreme Court with judges who have blocked enforcement of the 1965 Voting Rights Act?

3)   Which party stacked the Supreme Court with judges who abolished a century of campaign finance reforms in the U.S.-- permitting billionaires and corporations to donate unlimited, unsourced "dark money" to political campaigns?

4)   Which party has repeatedly cut taxes for billionaires (and corporations in 2017) during the past 42 years?

5)   Which party has repeatedly blocked or rolled back enforcement of pollution controls on corporate industry?

6)   Which party has repeatedly attempted to roll back fraud and public safety regulations on corporate industry?

So, it seems to me he's left with a choice: run on a third party ticket or stand his ground and call it like it is as a forward thinking Democrat. In the immediacy, I think he would be wise to float a moderate VP candidate early on to counter his misperceived stance on vaccines (Michele Lujan-Grisham comes to mind), do his homework regarding the Pentagon leaks, and consistently call it like it is as a Democrat. He can't be an appeaser regardless of how much he loved his grandpa; he can't advance Trump's Charlottesville meme, there are good people on all sides. The Kennedy name will hot hold up under that degree of compromise.

On 4/20/2023 at 6:53 PM, Paul Brancato said:

Leslie - Charles Willoughby is mentioned often. I know basically who he was. It seems he is a central figure in the conspiracy in Coup. Would you say what you and Hank thought his involvement was? What is his connection to Skorzeny etc? 

Paul,
As you likely know, he's most widely recognized as General MacArthur's "little fascist". 

Eleven of Lafitte's datebook entries in 1963 identify Willoughby, leading us to conclude that he was acting as a roving ambassador for international far-right causes, likely advising Ilse Skorzeny, and slotting somewhere between the categories of facilitator and decider. It's also clear from the datebook that Willoughby had either supplied a team for Dallas or made recommendations to Skorzeny and Angleton to bring expert marksmen Jack Canon and Charles Askins (and possibly Robert Emmett Johnson) on board.  And, his correspondence with his friend Dulles in 1963 might seem innocuous enough, but considered in context, it is compelling.
 

Dick Russell writes in his introduction to Coup:

Here established beyond doubt is that the real perpetrators needed a fall guy to take the rap as a lone, Left-leaning gunman. The set-up of Lee Harvey Oswald began many months before, carefully orchestrated by a cabal of evil geniuses in espionage. One of these was James Angleton, then chief of CIA Counterintelligence. Another was Charles Willoughby, who formerly served as spymaster for General Douglas MacArthur. A third was Otto Skorzeny, Hitler’s favorite commando, aided by the US to establish a postwar domicile in Franco’s Spain, where he created secret camps to train assassins. 

In implicating Willoughby (whose possible role was first raised in my book The Man Who Knew Too Much), French hitman Jean Rene Souetre, soldier-of-fortune Thomas Eli Davis, Jr., and oil industrialist Jack Crichton, Coup in Dallas opens wider doors to which researchers have been seeking keys for years. 

Albarelli’s book also adds corroboration to my own work as an investigative journalist, including knowledge imparted to me by double agent Richard Case Nagell. While Nagell is not named in the datebook, it provides substantiation for his stressing Mexico City’s Hotel Luma as a planning site and offers up the name of a Willoughby associate (Jack Canon) who Nagell had hinted was among several shooters in Dealey Plaza.

From Dick Russell's limited analysis of the Lafitte datebook:

WILLOUGHBY: Until my first book came out in 1992, assembling circumstantial evidence linking retired General Charles Willoughby as a possible “mastermind” of the assassination, no one had raised such a possibility before. The datebook cites the far-right General Willoughby numerous times, specifying: “Nov 22 – Willoughby backup – team [with a strikethrough of the word team] squad – tech building – phone booth/bridge.” Prior to that, an April 12 entry states: “Willoughby soldier kill squads.” 

Excerpts from Coup:

Pierre Lafitte finally lays out for us the timing and the circumstances of the involvement of Willoughby and Walker, and leads us to the cast of kill squads and teams known particularly to Willoughby for more than a decade, including two retired colonels that acted under the retired general's orders, who evaded scrutiny for decades.

We learn of a vast and tightly woven web of international organizations on the extreme right, driven primarily by religious ideology aligned with attempts to revive the Reich, and disguised by populist political action groups in America like the John Birch Society, which had been advanced by Gen. Walker among the military troops under his command. The reader also gets a better sense of the significance of Willoughby’s decades-long relationship with Allen Dulles, who was a former international lawyer for German corporations, the Director of the CIA, and a pivotal member of the Warren Commission. Their friendship, and the fact that both had known Otto Skorzeny since the inception of the World Commerce Corporation, prompted the authors to delve further into their written exchanges during the 1960s.

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

NYC Rest guide ad.

Talk of Ella R. photographs

. . . in NY at Previews

—Lafitte datebook, September 17, 1963

Meet with Willoughby at

(Ella R) others at

49 East 53rd St.

NYC

—Lafitte datebook, October 15, 1963

June 18, 1963

(Willoughby meet 8:000 pm)

A Preliminary Intro to The Generals

The Rev. John Howard Bowen shared membership in radical evangelical organizations with Billy Hargis, and Generals Edwin Walker and Charles Willoughby. Walker had recently participated in the purchase of the American Mercury, previously controlled by arms manufacturer J. Russell Maguire, and served as military editor of the publication. 

            General Willoughby, who published his own propaganda sheet, Foreign Intelligence Digest, was, as noted by CIA press officer Stanley Grogan, on Ulius Ammos’s team of trustees for International Services of Information Foundation (ISI), and provided commentary for INFORM, the publication of ISI. In a June 1961 internal routing slip from then CI Deputy Director Grogan in charge of Press Relations, to DCI Allen Dulles: “Willoughby bent my ear for over an hour yesterday trying to get CIA to pay $150 for each issue of the Weekly Crusader, they want to furnish us with one thousand copies for distribution. Willoughby is a trustee on Amoss’s staff…” [emphasis added]. 

. . . General Willoughby closes one particularly lengthy diatribe he shared with his good friend, DCI Allen Dulles with a quote of fascist philosopher, Oswald Spengler, with, “Untergand de Abendlandes” in reference to Spengler’s “Decline of the West.” Without notes, (Francis Parker] Yockey wrote his first book, Imperium: The Philosophy of History and Politics, in Brittas Bay, Ireland over the winter and early spring of 1948. Clearly, he shared Willoughby’s admiration of Spengler in Imperium, a Spenglerian critique of 19th century materialism and rationalism dedicated to “the hero of the twentieth century.” It is believed that he meant Adolf Hitler. Holocaust Denier Carto of the Liberty Lobby, and later owner of the American Mercury, as well as the American Free Press, took on the task of publishing Yockey’s Imperium when Britain’s infamous fascist, Sir Oswald Mosley failed to do so because of personality clashes with Yockey. The reader is reminded that ad man, propagandist H. Keith Thompson, long-time protégé of Yockey, handled public relations for Lee Oswald’s mother, Marguerite Claverie Oswald in 1964. It has been reported that Willis Carto was Yockey’s last visitor in jail before he bit down on the cyanide pill he had tucked away rather than be interrogated by American authorities.

7

The Generals, the Teams and the Kill Squads  

Congress meet- Willoughby- “soldiers kill squad”—

—Lafitte datebook, April 12, 1963

Willoughby & d. Valle 

NO re Madrid

Church group meet.

check with Hunt & Vickers

—Lafitte datebook, June 5, 1963 

Meet with Willoughby –

 (Ella R) —others – at

49 East 53^rd St. NYC       

—Lafitte datebook, October 15, 1963

In his indispensable book, The Man Who Knew Too Much, writer Dick Russell reveals that in April 1952 US Army Major General Charles A. Willoughby had “accompanied an American military mission to Spain whose ostensible purpose was to discuss with dictator Franco the question of establishing US air and naval bases there.”

            An August 19, 1952 article for The Reporter magazine by Frank Kluckhohn, discovered in CIA files released in January 2003 read:

Prominent Americans have, while traveling in foreign countries, often succeeded in embarrassing the men charged with carrying out the U.S. government’s policies in those countries. The most recent and striking example of this was provided by Major General Charles A. Willoughby, U.S. Army, retired, who last January turned up in Spain, where he was an honored guest of Generalissimo Francisco Franco. Willoughby had served as General of the Army, Douglas MacArthur’s chief of intelligence from 1941 ... until MacArthur’s removal in April 1951. He had retired from the Army in August 1951, and since then had played no important part in MacArthur’s New York headquarters. Early in April of this year [1952] an American military mission arrived in Spain to discuss with Franco and his Ministers the question of establishing U.S. air and naval bases there. Before the negotiations started, the members of the mission knew how delicate their job would be made by the touchiness of the Spaniards. But the Americans had little warning of the way their task would be complicated by Willoughby. The latter, by casting himself as a sort of unofficial spokesman and go-between with Franco, succeeded in building up considerably the Caudillo’s [military dictator] confidence at the bargaining table.  

. . . By 1952 Willoughby was widely known throughout the world as a war hero but also a staunch racist and anti-Semite. In spite of that, according to Prof. Scott in Dallas ’63, he enjoyed the respect of military brass including General Maxwell Taylor who would eventually serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Willoughby claimed to have immigrated to the United States from Germany in 1910 when he was eighteen years old and joined the US Army at the lowly rank of private. He was promoted to sergeant in 1913, with Company O of the Fifth US Infantry, and honorable discharged not long after. Upon leaving the Army, Willoughby attended Gettysburg College and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree after only one year, having allegedly attended the University of Heidelberg and the Sorbonne in Paris. His university attendance in Europe has been seriously challenged.

 . . . Historian Noel Twyman whose assassination research has seldom if ever been successfully challenged writes: “Willoughby has been described as a bull of a man (6 feet 3 inches tall and 220 pounds) who spoke with a German accent and affected a monocle. He was fluent in four languages. He had a reputation for being autocratic and arrogant…. Willoughby had received decorations from Benito Mussolini while serving as a military attaché in Ecuador. He had been toasted in Spain by the secretary general of the Falangist Party (fascists) as a ‘fellow Falangist and Reactionary.’ In a final gesture to Spain’s fascism in 1952, Willoughby lobbied Congress to authorize $100 million for Spain’s dictator, Francisco Franco.”

            According to Bruce Cumings, another historian who focused on Willoughby in his monumental work, The Origins of the Korean War, Volume II, “Willoughby was a profound racist and anti-Semite who saw the Soviet Bloc as ‘the historical continuity of Mongoloid-Pan-Slavism.’ He once wrote that ‘when the teeming millions of the Orient and the tropics got their hands-on magazine rifles, Kipling’s white man was on the way out….” Cumings continues, “During the Occupation of Japan and the Korean War, Willoughby maintained clandestine ties to Japanese militarists, including the bacteriological warfare criminal General Ishii; in the 1950s and 1960s he claimed to have close ties to Reinhard Gehlen and other former National Socialist officers then being used by United States intelligence in the Cold War …. After MacArthur’s sacking, Willoughby frequently visited Spain, and claimed to have been involved in the American military base negotiations with Franco. He set up a kind of right-wing international called the ‘international comite,’ using money from the Hunt brothers in Texas, linking Spain and Portugal together with German right-wingers, the Hargis Crusade, and others. He was an agent for Hunt Oil in seeking offshore oil rights in the Portuguese colony of Mozambique.”

. . . As we now know, Willoughby and Skorzeny met at least a half dozen times in Spain. Russell, unaware of these meetings while finalizing his book, speculated (correctly) that the two former military men had met and that Willoughby’s 1952 trip was followed by several additional trips to Madrid throughout the following years, trips during which we are again certain that he met Skorzeny. (See Endnote.) There can be little doubt that during such sojourns, Charles Willoughby also met Otto Skorzeny’s wife, Ilse, proving the October 15, 1963 Lafitte datebook entry - Meet with Willoughby –49 East 53^rd St. NYC - all the more intriguing. The address on East 53rd was the headquarters of Previews, Inc., the global real estate firm that provided cover for the business and intelligence activities of Otto’s wife, Ilse.

The General and The Director

Charles Willoughby was in frequent correspondence with the DIAs rising star, Allen Dulles from the early 1950s. Writes Dick Russell:

In 1955 . . . Willoughby’s “German connections” were the subject of an exchange of correspondence with CIA director Allen Dulles and Dulles’s then-deputy Frank Wisner, who was in charge of relations with the Gehlen network as well as the American resettlement of several hundred ex-National Socialist scientists under “Operation Paperclip.” By now Willoughby was living on Park Avenue in New York. I obtained the correspondence from among Willoughby’s personal papers. . . .

       Dulles to Willoughby, January 17, 1955: I appreciate your letter of 5 January and its interesting enclosures, which I have sent to some of my people for study. Also many thanks for the interesting books which arrived separately. . . . Regarding your idea of a trip to a certain country for the purpose of writing a book, I find this matter interesting and I shall be in touch with you further about it.

       Willoughby to Dulles, March 17, 1955: I believe in “centralization” of intelligence. In a covert outfit, the command leadership is most important . . . I would be entirely satisfied to serve with or under you and have every conviction that CIA could not be in better or more responsible hands. . . .

       On the “book” idea, I take the liberty of making certain suggestions: i.) I am more interested in Europe or So. America than in the Far East, at this time. ii) It is true that I have an exceptional entrée in Spain. iii) However, I can develop the same thing in Germany. My father’s family (though a divorce took place) is unimpeachable in Wilhelminian society. I am in touch with very high-level people. As you know, I have a Fluent command of French, German and Spanish. iv) I think “rapprochement” with Germany is becoming frightfully important. It can only be done on a personal basis, in the end. v) . . . I will develop for you a weekly report. . . . 

The correspondence between Dulles and Willoughby continued. Among Willoughby’s myriad of associations, OSS officer Ulius Amoss—architect of leaderless resistance—is reflected in memos that crossed Dulles’s desk. In October 1955, Willoughby offered the director aid in setting up “promising. . . social contacts” between young American servicemen stationed in Germany and their counterparts, perhaps implementing Amoss’s theories. 

            “The new generation has less to remember—and to resent,” Willoughby wrote to Dulles, suggesting that “In American garrison towns, in Germany, this approach can become the first step in developing [sic] a literary youth-movement, by utilizing existing Karl May clubs.” (Adolf Hitler, from his teenage years onward, was a devotee of the Wild West novels of Karl May, the German imitator of James Fennimore Cooper.) “From the viewpoint of social relations and youth indoctrination,” Willoughby continued, “it fits neatly, as you know, into one of the many facets of ‘psychological warfare.’ It could become the medium by which we can gain young adherents and partisans. Anyway, I am going to try it. . . . However, I do not want to stand alone (though the Germans will take it up) and I suggest that you examine it, from the viewpoint of a ‘discrete’ penetration and the ‘making of friends.’” 

Willoughby, the ABN and Ukraine’s OUN

Prof. Peter Dale Scott, poet, assassination expert and author cited previously, was among the first to recognize the potential significance of an obscure figure in the saga of Lee and Marina Oswald named Spas T. Raikin. Raikin holds the dubious distinction of having been one of the very first “officials” to have met Lee and Marina Oswald after they had left the Soviet Union, where Lee had allegedly defected in 1959, and arrived by steamship in the harbor at Hoboken, New Jersey. Raikin told the Oswalds that he was a representative for the Travelers Aid Society and that he was there to assist them anyway he could. 

            Interviewed twice by author Albarelli, Raikin said that he didn’t tell the Oswalds that he held a high-ranking position with the American Friends of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations. The ABN was strongly supported by Willoughby since its formation in Munich, Germany in 1946. 

            Confirming that SS Otto Skorzeny and General Charles Willoughby were at the very least aware of one another prior to Willoughby’s trips to Spain that began in the early 1950s, was their mutual associations with radical far right Ukrainians. . . .

On 4/20/2023 at 8:55 PM, Marjan Rynkiewicz said:

My version of who-shot how-shot where-shot when-shot is 100% correct re Oswald's shot-1 & shot-2 & re Hickey's 4 or 5 or 6 shot accidental auto burst.

This present thread like all conspiracy threads are basically why-shot -- or could be why-shot if the conspiracy contributed materially to the who-how-where-when-shot (ie re what happened in Dealey Plaza on that Friday).

But no conspiracy theory (including i suppose this one)(i havent read it) has (yet) contributed anything worth mentioning re what happened in Dealey Plaza. 

In other words no conspiracy theory (that i have ever bothered to read) has yet risen to the level of being worthy of explaining any kind of why-shot.

Marjan, once you recognize who tapped Oswald as the perfect patsy, the "why" comes into focus.

This final element of the Odessa was the so-called Gehlen Organizaiton (the Org), the N(a)zi intelligence system that sold itself to the U.S. at the end of the war . . . 

. . . The Gehlen Org substantially pre-empted the CIA’s civilian character before it was ever born.  The CIA was born to be rocked in the Gehlen’s cradle.  It remained dependent on the Org even when the Org turned into the BND. Thus, whatever the CIA was from the standpoint of the law, it remained from the standpoint of practical intelligence collection a front for a house of N(a)zi spies.
 

. . . It is not the point of this essay that there would have been no Cold War if the Odessa had not wanted it and had not been able, through the naive collaboration of the American military Right, to place Gehlen and his network in a position that ought to have been occupied by a descendant of the OSS. But it was precisely because the world was so volatile and confusing as of the transition from World War II to peacetime that the U.S. needed to see it, as Donovan put it in his plaintive appeal to Truman in the summer of 1945, “through American eyes.”  No (Na)zi eyes however bright, could see it for us without deceiving us and leading us to the betrayal of our own national character. — Carl Oglesby, The Secret Treaty of Fort Hunt

Trump touts authoritarian vision for second term: ‘I am your justice’

The former president is proposing deploying the military domestically, purging the federal workforce and building futuristic cities from scratch

By Isaac Arnsdorf and Jeff Stein

The Washington Post 

April 21, 2023 at 5:00 a.m. EDT 

Mandatory stop-and-frisk. Deploying the military to fight street crime, break up gangs and deport immigrants. Purging the federal workforce and charging leakers.

Former president Donald Trump has steadily begun outlining his vision for a second-term agenda, focusing on unfinished business from his time in the White House and an expansive vision for how he would wield federal power. In online videos and stump speeches, Trump is pledging to pick up where his first term left off and push even further.

Where he earlier changed border policies to reduce refugees and people seeking asylum, he’s now promising to conduct an unprecedented deportation operation. Where he previously moved to make it easier to fire federal workers, he’s now proposing a new civil service exam. After urging state and local officials to take harsher measures on crime and homelessness, Trump says he is now determined to take more direct federal action.

ADVERTISING

“In 2016, I declared I am your voice,” Trump said in a speech last month at the Conservative Political Action Conference and repeated at his first 2024 campaign rally in Waco a few weeks later. “Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”

Trump’s emerging platform marks a sharp departure from traditional conservative orthodoxy emphasizing small government, which was famously summed up in Ronald Reagan’s first inaugural address: “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Trump, by contrast, is proposing to apply government power, centralized under his authority, toward a vast range of issues that have long remained outside the scope of federal control.

Experts called some of Trump’s ideas impractical, reckless, self-defeating, potentially illegal and even dangerous. Some of Trump’s specific proposals are admittedly underdeveloped, such as a plan for building futuristic cities from scratch on unused federal land, which has been compared to projects in repressive regimes such as Saudi Arabia.

But Trump has a track record of floating ideas that stoke widespread outrage or confusion, then roiling government and legal institutions to realize them, such as banning citizens of several majority-Muslim countries from coming to the United States and imposing trade barriers. Trump is currently facing federal and local criminal investigationsarising from his unsuccessful efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat, which ultimately inspired a deadly riot by his supporters at the U.S. Capitol.

“As with so many things Trump, it’ll be sticky to sort out where what he’s proposing is literally unlawful, which some things would be, and where what he’s proposing would fly in the face of well-established and deeply principled norms,” said Steve Vladeck, an expert on constitutional and national security law at the University of Texas at Austin.

Trump campaign advisers said the former president will continue rolling out new policy ideas, with the goal of being upfront with voters about his agenda and letting them vote based on policy, similar to how he released a list of his potential Supreme Court nominees during the 2016 campaign. They identified Trump’s top priority as public safety and law enforcement, while stressing a commitment to collaborating with state authorities and working within the law.

“Together, we are going to finish what we started,” Trump said at the Waco rally last month. “With you at my side, we will totally obliterate the deep state, we will banish the warmongers from our government, we will drive out the globalists, and we will cast out the communists and Marxists, we will throw off the corrupt political class, we will beat the Democrats, we will rout the fake news media, we will stand up to the RINOs, and we will defeat Joe Biden and every single Democrat.”

Supporters have cheered Trump’s continued turn away from longtime conservative orthodoxy, such as free trade and foreign interventions, and credited him for ushering in larger shift in the party. In articulating a vision of a more coercive right-wing government, Trump is finding common ground with his leading rival for the 2024 Republican nomination, Ron DeSantis. The Florida governor has laid out his own doctrine of asserting more government power, exemplified by his flagship bills restricting classroom instruction of diversity, gender and sexual orientation; his moves to punish Disney for opposing him; and his suspension of a Democratic prosecutor.

The shared positioning on executive power by Trump and DeSantis, who lead early primary polls, underscores how much Trump has reshaped the Republican base in the mold of his “Make America Great Again” movement.

“The Reagan limited-government conservatism and emphasis on federalism is being displaced by a new muscular, nationalizing cultural conservatism, with a lot of anger,” said Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution who studies democracy. “One thing we’ve learned about Trump and authoritarian populists like him is not to dismiss what they’re saying as just idle language and toothless roar. We need to take it very seriously.”

The rise of a more activist view of right-wing governance has sparked a wider debate within the conservative movement. Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, another potential presidential aspirant, has criticized Trump and DeSantis as not conservative.

“The reality is we have to meet the government where it is presently,” said Paul Dans, director of the Heritage Foundation’s 2025 Presidential Transition Project, an effort by the conservative think tank and other conservative groups to develop policy proposals, personnel recommendations, training and transition plans representing a consensus of the conservative movement. “That’s really where the more activist leaning is coming from in this project, that we need skilled operators to start taking this battleship and pointing it in a new direction.”

The Trump campaign’s policy development is being led by Vince Haley, a former White House aide who previously worked for former House speaker Newt Gingrich. As the current Trump campaign’s policy head, Haley has been coordinating with Heritage and partner organizations the Conservative Partnership Institute and the Center for Renewing America, as well as the America First Policy Institute and Stephen Miller’s America First Legal, to consider policy ideas and potential personnel picks for an administration-in-waiting. One adviser likened the collaborative spirit to the legendary weekly meetings of conservative minds convened by the anti-tax activist Grover Norquist.

Heritage and partner groups, which are unveiling their full policy book at a conference outside Washington on Friday, say they’re laying the groundwork for a future Republican president without picking sides and have been in discussions with DeSantis’s team as well, led by policy aide Dustin Carmack. The Center for Renewing America is officially neutral; its president, former Trump budget director Russ Vought, has endorsed Trump, while senior fellow Ken Cuccinelli is leading a pro-DeSantis super PAC.

“I guarantee the stuff we’re putting forward is not going to get thrown in the trash,” said Vought, who contributed the transition project’s chapter on exercising authority through the Executive Office of the President, akin to a playbook for a White House chief of staff. Some of Vought’s ideas have found their way into Trump’s proposals, such as a recent announcement on bringing independent agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission and Federal Communications Commission under White House supervision.

“There’s a glove of power needed to beat back the administrative state or deep state,” he said, “and if you’re not willing to put your hand in that glove you will fail, regardless of how much credibility you have with the base.”

On the campaign trail, Trump has acknowledged the advantage of having more allies to help him prepare to operate the vast expanses of the administration more immediately than after his surprise win in 2016.

“When I went there, I didn’t know a lot of people; I had to rely on, in some cases, RINOs and others to give me some recommendations, but I know them all now,” he said in Iowa last month, referring pejoratively to “Republicans in Name Only.” “I know the good ones, I know the bad ones, I know the weak ones, I know the strong ones.”

‘Freedom Cities’

The new cities proposal consists of a national contest to charter up to 10 D.C.-sized metropolises on undeveloped federal land. Administration officials discussed the concept toward the end of Trump’s term, but he did not campaign on it in 2020. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner pushed the idea in White House meetings after it was initially brought up by Haley and another speechwriter on Miller’s team, Ross Worthington, who is also now on the 2024 campaign, according to a person familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.

Trump has discussed the new “Freedom Cities” in utopian terms, with flying cars, manufacturing hubs and opportunities for homeownership, promising a “quantum leap in the American standard of living.” The campaign has provided few details on how the plan would work in practice.

Trump acknowledged that the idea needed more work over a Sunday dinner in mid-March, according to economic adviser Stephen Moore. “He said, ‘I’m still trying to figure out how it’s going to work,’ something like that,’” Moore recalled in an interview. “He said, ‘How do you think we should make that work?’ And I’m going to help him with the idea.”

Moore said the cities could be designed in part by offering tax incentives and creating a “super police force that keeps the place safe,” reflecting GOP allegations that Democratic-run cities are awash with crime. It’s not clear how that will prove more attractive than similar measures already enacted by GOP governors. Even some of Trump’s allies have been skeptical of the plan.

“I hate this thing,” one outside economic adviser to Trump said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations with campaign officials. “The economic problems facing the nations are so severe, and we’re going to talk make-believe about ‘building new cities’?”

Experts stress that cities have historically grown around natural centers of economic activity rather than state edict. “You can’t just wave a wand and have cities come into being,” said Rick McGahey, an economist at the New School who specializes in urban growth. “This is not where cities come from. The concept does not work.”

Some observers say the idea more closely resembles libertarian fantasies, such as that produced by a think tank funded by tech billionaire Peter Thiel, of new private communities run on cryptocurrency. Others found it reminiscent of projects to build centrally controlled cities from scratch in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Trump has routinely praised and defended authoritarian foreign leaders such as Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, along with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Some Trump allies give him credit for what they see as a bold new idea. One campaign adviser compared the proposal’s ambition to the “Opportunity Zones” economic incentives in Trump’s 2017 tax legislation, scaled up to emulate historic Republican achievements such as Abraham Lincoln’s Homestead Act and Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway System.

“There is this broad recognition that we don’t build enough things in America and that, you know, obviously, we have great American cities, but we haven’t really built a new model city,” said Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), who has endorsed Trump’s presidential bid. “There are a lot of other countries that are trying different approaches out, and I think it’s fine for us to think about doing that here, too.”

Trump has specified that he wants to define architectural standards in existing cities as well, insisting on classical-style buildings, monuments to “true American heroes,” and schools and streets named “not after communists but patriots.” He has also proposed forcibly removing homeless people to outlying tent cities, wading into an area usually left to local governments and relying on unclear federal authority.

“Violators of these bans will be arrested, but they will be given the option to accept treatment and services if they are willing to be rehabilitated,” Trump said in a recent campaign video.

‘Patriotic education’

Similarly, Trump has suggested a stronger federal role in education, a matter that conservatives have traditionally advocated keeping under local control. He has proposed letting all parents use state funds to send their children to the school of their choice, similar to Republican-led legislation in Arizona, Iowa and Utah. Critics say the arrangement hollows out public education.

Trump called for a school choice program during the 2016 campaign but didn’t push it when Republicans controlled Congress, and a proposal by his education secretary, Betsy DeVos, for “Education Freedom Scholarships” went nowhere. A second Trump administration could expand school choice through budget reconciliation (requiring a simple majority in the Senate) by offering tax credits for tuition, according to Frederick M. Hess, the director of education policy studies at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute.

But a direct federal voucher program would entail increasing federal outlays on K-12 education. Trying to require school choice as a condition of districts’ receiving federal funding probably would face a court challenge, Hess aid.

Trump also proposed holding direct elections for parents to hire and fire school principals. Hess said that proposal lacks clear federal authority and raised a range of questions, such as who the candidates would be, whether they would be partisan, and who would set the qualifications and terms.

“This is not a real solution,” Houman Harouni, a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, said of Trump’s proposals. “It has to do with communicating to a portion of his base that they are going to have the religious or nationalist or exclusive education that they would like.”

Trump said he would reestablish a presidential commission to promote a “patriotic” curriculum that rejects scholarship on systemic racism. His “1776 Commission,” which did not include any professional historians, released a report at the end of his presidency that demonized institutions such as federal agencies and universities.

“What Trump is trying to resurrect is something that was thoroughly discredited by the professional historical community in a totally apolitical context,” said James Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association. “There’s lots of places to look and see what happens when history education gets stripped of its professional integrity in the interest of a political party.”

‘Shatter the deep state’

In another form of enforcing loyalty and suppressing dissent, Trump has proposed making it easier to fire federal workers, cracking down on media leaks, and establishing a “truth and reconciliation commission” to publish records on alleged abuses by spy agencies. He said he will require all federal employees to pass a new civil service test covering due-process rights, free speech, religious liberties, and Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure.

“This is how I will shatter the deep state and restore government that is controlled by the people and for the people,” Trump said in a campaign video. In another, he elaborated, “We need to clean house of all of the warmongers and America-Last globalists in the deep state, the Pentagon, the State Department and the national security industrial complex.”

Some of Trump’s proposals for overhauling the merit-based civil service would require congressional action. The result could be to undermine the ability of professional public servants to reliably deliver government services without political interference, warned Max Stier, chief executive of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan nonprofit that supports federal workforce development.

“He is proposing changes that would create the world that he is objecting to,” Stier said. “It does have real-time consequences in terms of undermining public trust in our government. That’s a real problem because trust in government is a core part of our democracy.”

‘Military resources’

Trump drew widespread criticism as president, especially during the demonstrations against the murder of George Floyd in 2020, for advocating harsh treatment of protesters, clearing peaceful demonstrators outside the White House, and deploying unmarked federal agents in Washington and Portland, Ore. Since leaving office, Trump has said he regrets not going even further to deploy military power domestically and wouldn’t hesitate to do so if he returns to the White House.

“In cities where there has been a complete breakdown of public safety, I will send in federal assets, including the National Guard, until law and order is restored,” Trump said at CPAC. “We will use all necessary state, local, federal and military resources to carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.”

In campaign videos and messages, Trump has specifically proposed requiring police departments to use stop-and-frisk, a tactic that has been widely criticized for discriminating against people of color and that a federal judge in New York found to violate the Constitution’s prohibition on unreasonable searches. Trump also said he would order the Justice Department to investigate charging decisions by local prosecutors, challenging the constitutional division between federal and local authorities. He further proposed using federal law enforcement to dismantle gangs and execute drug dealers and human traffickers.

Trump doesn’t envision a national police force, the campaign adviser said, and in practice his initiatives could be accomplished through federal funding or joint operations with state authorities.

The president has no legal authority over local police or prosecutors, and attempts to attach conditions to federal funding usually face litigation, according to Vladeck, the University of Texas law professor. There are legal limits on using the military for civilian law enforcement but allowances for acting in a support capacity that a Trump administration could try to exploit, Vladeck said.

“Republicans have tried to corner the market on claiming the federal government has been weaponized, but that’s what this is,” he added. “And the only way you can do that is by interjecting federal authority into matters that constitutionally or at least traditionally have been reserved to the states.”

Liz Goodwin and Ashley Parker contributed to this report.

54 minutes ago, Evan Marshall said:

He never id'd them by name. He simply stated they were survivors of the Bay Of Pigs. He never fired a shot. He was just there in case they missed-he had lost a family member at the BOP and considered JFK responsible for their deaths.

Are you arguing they were disgruntled Cubans acting on their on accord without benefit of financing or technical support?

20 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

BTW, whatever politics you have on Russia, how can anyone deny those classified documents that were leaked? 

Those are devastating.  And to buy the story that a National Guard guy had them?

The documents are the Pentagon Papers of Ukraine.   

 

Valentine offers a very persuasive theory, imo. 

I think you've discussed the Green Beret buddy before, I asked why you're unwilling to identify those he claims were shooters in Dallas, and I believe you said something about your word being your bond. Fair enough. Would you at least elaborate on who they allegedly reported to?

Congrats on all those offspring!

10 minutes ago, Paul Brancato said:

Dresser - Bush family connection. Could you summarize the SWRI connection?

Equally significant if not more so is Dresser president Neil Mallon's decades-long friendship with Allen Dulles who he hosted in Dallas on October 28/29 where AWD spoke before the World Affairs Council about his concerns for Algeria, in spite of that nation's successful independence from France in Mar 1962.

I'm speculating that the field test laboratory near San Antonio was a component of Tom Slick's SWRI as featured here:  https://www.swri.org/industries/ballistics-explosives

2 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

When did Atkins leave Madrid, or go to VN? Where was he in 1963? Sure seems like a good candidate for shooter.

With thanks to someone who is following this thread from a distance.

Looking for Southwest Firearms Field Testing Laboratories.

A likely candidate in San Antonio. Tom Slick (1916 - 1962) was on the board of Dresser Industries.
https://www.swri.org/who-we-are/history

Boot_Askins_1963.pdf

59 minutes ago, Paul Brancato said:

When did Atkins leave Madrid, or go to VN? Where was he in 1963? Sure seems like a good candidate for shooter.

 Paul, I've not yet identified specific dates/years other than Madrid in early 1950s, then Vietnam under the Eisenhower administration.  We know he was in Dallas in November 1963. The following might help flesh out a general timeline: 

            After several years in Madrid, enjoying the company of his family and bird hunting in the Spanish countryside, Askins was sent to Vietnam to join the select number of Eisenhower “advisors” training South Vietnamese soldiers in shooting and paratrooping. During those years, the colonel managed to earn his airborne qualification with both countries, amassing 132 jumps before calling it quits. While posted on the Vietnamese front, Askins would have encountered Jack Canon and Lucien Conein, among a number of other legends in that ill-fated endeavor. 

            Throughout his military career, Askins also indulged in big game hunting at every chance, and continued to do so the remainder of his life. He retired to San Antonio, Texas having been stationed at Fort Sam Houston when he returned stateside. He died there in March 1999. In a carefully worded statement, repeated by all who write about the legendary “Boots” Askins, “He retired from government service in 1963.”

    Author and expert on the topic of the use of lethal force, Massad Ayoob has been editor of GUNS magazine and the law enforcement columnist for American Handgunner since the 1970s. In a Nov-Dec 1999 article directed to rifle aficionados, particularly those fans of Remington Model 911, Ayoob draws the reader’s attention to the legendary Charles Askins, Jr., summarizing him as “A controversial modern legend.” During his career, as lawman and in the military, the colonel had aggressively sought out maximum action. The writer suggests that Askins’ lack of hesitation to kill had also led to questionable shootings.

Ayoob, who knew Col. Askins personally, explained that for those who knew him, there was no other way to describe him other than a “stone-cold killer,” indicating that facets of “Boots” Askins were not suited to law enforcement, including racism and a killer instinct that could sometimes “slip its leash.” By the colonel’s own count, he had killed twenty-seven, not including [racial slur] and Mexicans. In a separate account by an avid gun historian, we learned that Askins did not hesitate to shoot opponents regardless of race or nationality but didn’t consider those of minority status worth counting in his tally. Askins himself said that he hunted animals so avidly because he wasn't allowed to hunt men anymore.

***

Thus are the profiles of at least two men selected by Charles Willoughby, with likely approval of Edwin Walker, to show up in Dealey Plaza. Whether the men considered themselves “hired killers” or just anxious and willing participants, we can suspect they had personal reasons that prompted them to be “in on the kill” in Dallas—a shared hatred of Kennedy and the policies he was advancing. It is clear from the datebook that by mid-September, both Askins and Canon were on the mind of the project manager for the assassination plot. Lafitte later writes that by Dec. 4, Canon had “gone home.” 

Along with "Souetre" and "Hungarians", award winning Texas sharpshooter Charles "Boots" Askins appears in the 1963 record maintained by Pierre Lafitte in context of the planning for the assassination in Dallas.

For anyone relying on wikipedia for information on Askins, the site currently fails to capture the implications of "Boots" Askins' post in Madrid. He was there to coordinate with Franco as he rebuilt his military and would have been in a position to interact with N-azi Johannes Bernhardt — close associate of Otto Skorzeny — who contributed significantly to Franco's project via his South American conglomerate, SOFINDUS.  This also means that Askins was at the Madrid embassy at the same time as Al Ulmer who as you probably know was in Tyler, Texas on November 22, visiting his brother and the Joe Zeppas (Delta Drilling) who that afternoon allegedly flew Barbara and GHWBush to Dallas in order for them to catch a flight back to Houston. Ulmer was scheduled to go into business with Win Scott along with a group of former intelligence officers.

Zeppa and Delta Drilling were instrumental in the Meadows-Skorzeny Spanish oil scheme of 1952 — at the same time Askins was posted in the Spanish capitol — which had the imprimatur of Franco.

Which brings us full circle to Askins who appears twice in the 1963 Lafitte datebook. Who but someone (Pierre Lafitte) working closely with Skorzeny stateside could have known the name Askins? What are the odds that the head of the SW Region of INS in 1963 and former chief of US Border Patrol Harlon B. Carter was a long-time friend of "Boots"?

We have no reason (yet) to argue that Askins and Canon left the U.S. immediately following the assassination; but certainly Harlon Carter would have been in a position to provide smooth sailing as it were.  Perhaps more significantly: if Askins had known Skorzeny stemming from their early days in Madrid, as well as Carter stemming from the Border Patrol, might he have served as a conduit to INS for Skorzeny's other teams — including Jean Rene Souetre —  for instance those arriving from Europe, Canada, or Mexico?

 

It’s clear now that the path to who actually financed the Dallas plot likely begins — and possibly ends — with the banker long-considered one of the brightest minds in world-banking, Hjalmar Schacht, operating in league with those who permitted him to resume his financial career instead of going to prison (or worse) as a convicted N(a)-zi criminal. . . .

Hjalmar Schacht is the key to determining how exactly the bulk of the funds for Lancelot Project flowed. As referenced above, it was likely through the banking black hole of Otto Skorzeny’s business partner, Algur Meadows, executive of Howard Corp, the off-the-books account derived from West Texas Crude lodged in Republic National Bank of Dallas. [ever mindful that RNB was the regional correspondent bank for Chase Manhattan)

Highlights from Carl Oglesby’s essay, The Secret Treaty of Fort Hunt 

. . . Key National Socialist companies needed to be relicensed outside Germany in order to escape the reach of war-reparations claims.  And tens of thousands of N(a)-zi war criminals, almost all of them members of the SS, needed help to escape Germany and safely regroup in foreign colonies capable of providing security and livelihoods . . . 

. . .  from minutes of an August 10, 1944, meeting at the Hotel Maison Rouge in Strasbourg … The N(a)-zi Party is ready to supply large amounts of money to those industrialists who contribute to the post-war organization abroad. In return, the Party demands all financial reserves which have already been transferred abroad or may later be transferred, so that after the defeat a strong new Reich can be built.

The N-azi expert in this area was Hitler’s one-time financial genius and Minister of the Economy, Dr. Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht, available to Bormann even thought he was in prison on suspicion of involvement in the anti-Hitler coup of 1944. According to a U.S. Treasury Department report of 1945, at least 750 enterprises financed by the N-azi party had set up outside Germany by the end of the war. These firms were capable of generating an annual income of approximately $30 million, all of it available to N(a)-zi causes.  It was Schacht’s ability to finesse the legalities of licensing and ownership that brought this situation about.[note: are these 750 enterprises distinct from the hundreds that fell under the umbrella of World Commerce Corporation and/or SOFINDUS?]

Organizing the physical removal of the N-azis’ material assets and the escape of SS personnel were the tasks of the hulking Otto Skorzeny, simultaneously an officer of the SS, the Gestapo and the Waffen SS as well as Hitler’s “favorite commando.”  Skorzeny worked closely with Bormann and Schacht in transporting the N-azi assets to safety outside Europe and in creating a network of SS escape routes (“rat lines”) that led from all over Germany to the Bavarian city of Memmingen, then to Rome, then by sea to a number of N-azi retreat colonies set up in the global south.

The international organization created to accommodate Bormann’s plans is most often called “The Odessa,” a German acronym for Organization of Veterans of the SS.  It has remained active as shadowy presence since the war and may indeed constitute N(a)zism’s most notable organizational achievement.  But we must understand that none of Bormann’s, Skorzeny’s, and Schacht’s well-laid plans would have stood the least chance of success had it not been for a final component of their organization, one not usually associated with the Odessa at all but very possibly the linchpin of the entire project.

Enter Gehlen...

This final element of the Odessa was the so-called Gehlen Organizaiton (the Org), the N(a)zi intelligence system that sold itself to the U.S. at the end of the war . . . 

. . . The Gehlen Org substantially pre-empted the CIA’s civilian character before it was ever born.  The CIA was born to be rocked in the Gehlen’s cradle.  It remained dependent on the Org even when the Org turned into the BND. Thus, whatever the CIA was from the standpoint of the law, it remained from the standpoint of practical intelligence collection a front for a house of N(a)zi spies.

The Org was not merely military, which is bad, not merely foreign, which is much worse, and not merely N(a)zis, which is intolerable; it was not even professionally committed to the security of the U.S. and Western Europe.  It was committed exclusively to the security of the Odessa.  All the Gehlen Org ever wanted the U.S. to be was anti-communist, the more militantly so the better.  It never cared in the least for the security of the United States, its Constitution or its democratic tradition. 

It is not the point of this essay that there would have been no Cold War if the Odessa had not wanted it and had not been able, through the naive collaboration of the American military Right, to place Gehlen and his network in a position that ought to have been occupied by a descendant of the OSS. But it was precisely because the world was so volatile and confusing as of the transition from World War II to peacetime that the U.S. needed to see it, as Donovan put it in his plaintive appeal to Truman in the summer of 1945, “through American eyes.”  No (Na)zi eyes however bright, could see it for us without deceiving us and leading us to the betrayal of our own national character. 

. . .the key point that comes crashing through the practical and moral confusion about this matter, once one sees that Gehlen’s Organization was an arm of the Odessa, is that, whether it was ethical or not, the U.S. did not pick up a Gift Horse in Gehlen at all; it picked up a Trojan Horse.

. . . The unconditional surrender the Germans made to the Allied command at the little red schoolhouse in Reims was the surrender only of the Germany armed services.  It was not the surrender of the hard SS core of the N-azi Party.  The SS did not surrender, unconditionally or otherwise, and thus N-azism itself did not surrender.  The SS chose rather, to seek other means of continuing the war while the right wing of the United States military establishment, through fears and secret passions and a naïveté of its own, chose to facilitate that choice.  The history that we have lived through since then stands witness to the consequence. 

2 minutes ago, Michael Griffith said:

I recommend that you read Dr. Marc Selverstone's historic new book The Kennedy Withdrawal. Using Kennedy White House tapes and numerous internal documents and other sources, Selverstone makes a strong case that JFK had no intention of withdrawing from South Vietnam until the Saigon government was stable and strong enough to resist Communist aggression on its own, and that even after withdrawal, military aid was going to continue. 

Thanks Michael.

With that, I'll withdraw from this thread out of deference to @W. Niederhutwith genuine apologies.

18 minutes ago, Michael Griffith said:

Moyar cites a boatload of primary sources in his endnotes. However, we need to understand that the President's signature will rarely be on a deployment order, if ever. The order will be discussed by the President and his NSC, etc., then he will give his approval, and then actual orders will be signed by someone else. Who signs the order will depend on the size of the deployment. In many cases, a deputy undersecretary or even his designee, such as a senior military officer, will sign the orders. 

The President will sign things like major policy statements, such as NSAMs, but he will rarely sign deployment orders. 

 

So it's possible he was advised verbally — in likely a persuasive fashion that unless the advisors were increased incrementally VN would fall — and the paperwork followed, which you're saying he never actually saw or signed? Did the 14,000 reflect rotations or were that many US military in VN at any given time?

 

3 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

Leslie,

     You must have overlooked my comments about the fact that this thread isn't about Carto or the Liberty Lobby. You seem to be colluding in Griffith's tireless highjacking of this thread.

     Focusing on the Liberty Lobby is a CIA propaganda straw man that has been used for the past 30 years to discredit Prouty's original whistleblowing about the CIA, Vietnam, and the JFK assassination.

      As for the timing of Prouty's revelations about his colleague Ed Lansdale, when did he and General Krulak first ID Lansdale in the Dealey Plaza photos?

     As for JFK's critically important decision to get out of Vietnam in 1963, surely you're not joining Griffith in denying that history are you?

And my apologies for seemingly intentionally hijacking your thread. I was thinking it might be productive to expand the context to include the assassination specifically which for me implicates Carto and his direct association with General Edwin Walker.  From there, I had hoped to determine whether Col. Prouty actually ventured outside the official structures of military-intel, or does he focus solely on how "ops" work within the confines of established protocol?  that's a clumsy way of apologizing.  I'll launch another thread if it seems there might be an interest in pursuing this angle of Prouty's direct knowledge. 

Re. Kennedy and Vietnam.  Not unlike his predilection for extramarital dalliances, we/Hank and I agreed early on that elevating John Kennedy or any in the Kennedy family to sainthood actually serves to undermine their amazing sacrifices and contributions to our nation because it sets up a "whataboutism" dynamic that inevitably skews facts and the historical record.  If Kennedy signed off on over 14,000 US military personnel — regardless of the umbrella designation of "advisors" — the facts should be addressed head on.  It doesn't change his commitment as proscribed in 263 by any means; it does keep the record straight and "honest," and if anything, underscores just how deceived he had been the first two years of his presidency. Similarly, that he had a fling with Ella Rometsch should not be buried; the scandal is significant to understanding that crucial aspect of the plot  — designed specifically to enrage those on the fence sufficiently enough for Angleton to advise Lafitte of the "high level gathering in D.C." and for Otto Skorzeny to say "Lancelot Go".

4 hours ago, Chuck Schwartz said:

Here is a snapshot of Askins' biography per Wikipedia, "

US Army and later life[edit]

Askins served in the US Army during World War II as a battlefield recovery officer, making landings in North Africa, Italy, and on D-day.^[6] After World War II, he spent several years in Spain as an attache to the American embassy there, helping Franco rebuild Spain's munition plants.^[6] After his assignment in Spain, he was reassigned to Vietnam, where he trained South Vietnamese soldiers in shooting and airborne operations. Throughout his military career, he indulged in big game hunting at every opportunity, and continued to do so after his retirement.^[1] He held several big game hunting records in his lifetime, as well as two national pistol championships, an American Handgunner of the Year award, and innumerable smaller titles in competitive shooting.^[5] Askins retired to San Antonio, Texas after his final years in the military at Fort Sam Houston.^[6]

Askins, like his father, was a prolific writer, writing books and over 1,000 magazine articles on subjects related to hunting and shooting.^[6] His writing career spanned 70 years, from 1929 until his death in 1999.^[1]

Legacy[edit]

Askins was controversial for the relish with which he described the numerous fatal shootings in his law enforcement and military careers, stating he had killed 27 men.^[1][4] Because he was involved in numerous shootouts along the US/Mexico border, and due to his stated practice of not keeping track of African-Americans and Hispanics, the actual number of killings he committed was potentially much higher.^[1] Askins once remarked that he thought he was a psychopathic killer, and that he hunted animals so avidly because he was not allowed to hunt men anymore.^[1]

Chuck, wiki fails to capture the implications of "Boots" Askins in Madrid. He was there to coordinate with Franco as he rebuilt his military which means he would have interacted with N-azi Johannes Bernhardt — close associate of Otto Skorzeny — who contributed significantly to Franco's project to  via his South American conglomerate, SOFINDUS.  This also means that Askins was at the Madrid embassy at the same time as Al Ulmer who as you probably know was in Tyler, Texas on November 22, visiting his brother and the Joe Zeppas (Delta Drilling) who that afternoon allegedly flew Barbara and GHWBush to Dallas in order for them to catch a flight back to Houston. Ulmer was scheduled to go into business with Win Scott along with a group of former intelligence officers.

Zeppa and Delta Drilling were instrumental in the Meadows-Skorzeny Spanish oil scheme of 1952 — at the same time Askins was posted in the Spanish capitol — which had the imprimatur of Franco.

Which brings us full circle to Askins who appears twice in the 1963 Lafitte datebook. Who but someone (Pierre Lafitte) working closely with Skorzeny stateside could have known the name Askins? What are the odds that the head of the SW Region of INS in 1963 and former chief of US Border Patrol Harlon B. Carter was a long-time friend of "Boots"?

We have no reason (yet) to argue that Askins and Canon left the U.S. immediately following the assassination; but certainly Harlon Carter would have been in a position to provide smooth sailing as it were.  Perhaps more significantly: if Askins had known Skorzeny stemming from their early days in Madrid, as well as Carter stemming from the Border Patrol, might he have served as a conduit to INS for Skorzeny's other teams — including Souetre —  for instance those arriving from Europe, Canada, or Mexico?