Leslie Sharp

Sorry, Roger, I hadn't read your remarks prior to posting a similar question of Steve. I agree with you. Unless I'm misreading, this seems to infer that INS didn't actually detain French citizens but that French intelligence concocted the story for their own internal agenda.

Steve, do you think Commandoair40 is arguing that INS in Dallas didn't actually detain individuals they identified as having French citizenship? Is he suggesting that SDECE planted the story?

Steve, I wonder if you might be thinking of La Cagoule? Excerpt from Coup in Dallas . . . A Roadmap Chapter 1: WWII, Special Ops, and Assassinations Author Albarelli deftly opens this book with the 1942 political assassination of WWII Vichy France's de facto Prime Minister, Admiral Francois Darlan. His murder assuredly involved personnel from America’s Office of Strategic Services. As the war in Europe had escalated, the OSS, headed by General William J. Donovan, had assumed a role previously filled by the office of Coordinator of Information, the nation's first peacetime non-departmental intelligence organization. Melding tactics derived from a French terrorist group known as La Cagoule, or “the Hooded Ones,” with the expertise of operatives from Gen. Donovan’s OSS, Admiral Darlan was vanquished in an operation in which a vulnerable young man Fernand Bonnier de la Chapelle, was designated the patsy who was meant to be captured and then abandoned. Albarelli astutely draws parallels between the setup of de la Chapelle and that of Lee Harvey Oswald in the murder of President Kennedy in Dallas two decades later. The readers learn that La Cagoule, a secret Roman Catholic, anti-communist, anti-Semitic French fascist organization intent on employing terrorism as a form of intimidation, engaged in heroin trafficking and marketeering until Hitler’s invasion of Poland. Those same elements then organized the French version of his Gestapo, The Malice, whose support of the invaders tormented Vichy France for a half decade. After Hitler’s defeat and the liberation of Paris, General Charles de Gaulle ordered the execution of its leader, marking the beginning of what would escalate into a virulent animus toward the French president that persisted through de Gaulle’s own dangerous fall of 1963. The details of this history may seem irrelevant to the assassination of Kennedy until Albarelli introduces the SS officer exiled in Madrid, Otto Skorzeny, best known as the mastermind behind the rescue of Italy’s fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, a feat that established his bona fides as a brilliant tactician. It is Skorzeny who provides a critical link in the chain of events from fascist Europe of the 1930s and 1940s to the racist, anti-Semitic politics that permeated Texas well into in the early 1960s. Confirmed in a series of letters sent from a Parisian amateur detective to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, in which he identified facts that were not yet in the public domain at the time of his writing, “only the former director of the CIA, Allen Dulles could clear Otto Skorzeny of his critical role in the assassination.” For now, days after Fernand’s execution, it is discovered that the $2,000 US he had in his overcoat pocket did indeed come from Henri d’Astier de la Vigerie, a fascinating character. Before the war, d’Astier had joined La Cagoule, a secret Catholic, anti-communist, anti-Semitic French fascist organization . . . . . . La Cagoule and the Malice Members of La Cagoule were sometimes called Cagoulards. French writer Renee Pierre-Goss, in a rare 1945 volume on “the conspiracy in Algiers,” wrote with equally rare perception that Henri d’Astier was “in fact the occult leader of most of the elements resisting in Algiers.” Pierre-Goss goes on: He [Henri d’Astier] was a Cagoulard; people repeat it, and he does not try to hide the fact. His innate taste for intrigue, his urge to make trouble, to act as an outlaw, and to expend his strength recklessly, make him a kind of musketeer quite out of place in our century. An aristocrat, sprung from an ancient line, he is the enfant terrible of his family. He willingly talks of his disagreements with his two brothers. He is inclined toward the right, of course, but he does not conceal that he is much more royalist than monarchist. His personal tendencies lead him to devote himself more to the man than to an idea…. Henri d’Astier is more than a condottiere. He is completely sincere, entirely disinterested, and attached with every fiber of his being to the land of France. He suffers to see France in eclipse and the salt of the land—her best sons—losing its savor. He has the character of a leader and its essential capacity to arouse passionate devotion around him. Sometimes he has done mad things, extravagant, incredible things, but never second-rate. La Cagoule, very much like today’s jihadist groups in composition, was founded in 1936 by Eugene Deloncle, an unattractive, short squat man who had been blessed with unusual hypnotic and persuasive powers, along with several other people, including French industrialist and ultra-rightist, Jacques Lemaigre Dubreuil. Deloncle, an engineer, who spoke precious little in public about La Cagoule, said the purpose of the group was to restore the Catholic monarchy to France. Deloncle didn’t speak of the ways La Cagoule would achieve its aim, but history informs us that the organization was expert in carrying out assassinations, blowing up buildings, kidnapping, wiretapping, and torture. La Cagoule means “the hood” or “the hooded ones,” because members at most of their meetings wore face-covering masks to conceal their identities. Historians Gaylek Brunelle and Annette Finlay-Croswhite, whose brilliant volume on La Cagoule, Murder in the Metro, aptly write: “Most scholars dismiss the Cagoule as a group of half-hearted, often comical street thugs whose inexperience doomed their farfetched plan to overthrow the French government and bring Mussolini-style fascism to France…. We contend that historians have underestimated the significance of Cagoulard violence and as a result have failed to perceive the group’s purposeful terrorist action for what it was—a form of public discourse that quite successfully engaged the French populace in a dialogue about the fate of the Third Republic and, in the process, left a chilling trail of bloodshed.” Brunelle and Finley-Croswhite continue: In the police reports and legal files associated with their activities, members of the Cagoule were identified as “terrorists.” The terms “terrorist” and “terrorism,” however, have proven extremely difficult for scholars to define, resulting in a multitude of possible definitions that the events in the United States on September 11, 2001, and the resulting outpouring of literature on terrorism, have complicated and problematized even more. “Terrorism” is a pejorative, but one with a long history. Terrorist acts inspiring widespread fear have been written about since at least the time of Xenophon, but ironically the word “terrorism” was coined in the French Revolution and is specifically associated with governance through intimidation. The first terrorists were the Jacobins, who sought to influence political behavior through terror, and their instrument of execution, the guillotine, became a symbol of terrorism or at least a method of behavior control. “Terrorism” was introduced into the English language in 1794. Brunelle and Finley-Croswhite’s contention that the Cagoule “perpetuated terrorism” is precisely on the mark, and, upon close examination, as we shall see, the alliance of Cagoule, the hooded ones, with the National Socialists, combined with the actions of the OSS in North Africa, strongly set the initial stage for JFK’s assassination. *** We turn now to what matters most to this investigation, those hooded ones directly relevant to the murder of Kennedy in Dallas in 1963. Jean Pierre Lafitte, author of the documents central to our story, enters the following in his loosely constructed day by day account of what was going on in his world in 1963: Lamy - Filiol at hotel

Thanks Paul, I'm reading the full thread now.

Steve, I'm curious why you delved into Jean Rene Souetre?

Hersh's admonition to Lauria to not leap to conclusions is worth the listen. . .

Thorough backstory, Steve. What is your view on the fact that Kail appears in the records of Pierre Lafitte?

Paul, I failed to refer to our own book! We concluded that the best candidate for the ASCI guy in Hoover's office on the 11th was Col. Graham E. Schmidt. Chapter 4, Suicides and Call Girls, Coup in Dallas . . . FBI Director Hoover's appointment calendar for that Thursday indicates he had only one meeting scheduled, at 3:30 with US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, Judge Warren Burger. There is nothing on Director Hoover’s calendar the remainder of that weekend. On Monday, December 16, Hoover was scheduled to have "lunch with the President at the White House." The previous morning, Wednesday, December 11, Hoover met with the Deputy Chief of Staff for Military Intelligence, Army Major General Edgar Doleman, and the Chief of the Security Division of the ACSI (Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence). The name of the colonel had been redacted. ACSI is recognized by assassination authorities as the division of the Army that Dorothe Matlack, assistant director of the Office of Intelligence for the Army reported to. It was Matlack who, at the insistence of Col. Sam Kail, a military intelligence officer who had been assigned to work with the CIA, made arrangements for George de Mohrenschildt and French born Haitian banker Clémard Joseph Charles during their visit to D.C. prior to their departure for Haiti. With much gratitude to researchers Paul Brancato and Lawrence Haapanen, the colonel that met with FBI Director Hoover on December 11 has been identified as Col. Graham E. Schmidt. Schmidt had been a member of the Nuremberg Military Community in the late 1950s while Operation Paperclip was in full throttle. Schmidt is mentioned by author Linda Hunt who is responsible for a 1991 groundbreaking exposé of the operation in her book Secret Agenda. Hunt drew extensively from the administrative files, the “Top Secret” files, and the dossiers of the ACSI’s Paperclip records stored at the Washington National Records Center. Hoover’s guest on December 11, Col. Schmidt, was also named in documents related to shutting down Operation MKULTRA in September 1963. He is mentioned in transcripts of the 1977 Senate Hearing on Intelligence which was holding the Army’s feet to the fire for those experiments. The Senate hearing, chaired by Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii and Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater opened with the history of two deaths: Frank Olson, the CIA scientist assigned to the Technical Services Staff in 1953 when he was thrown through a window of the NY Statler Hilton by Pierre Lafitte and company, and tennis star Harold Blauer who died after the fifth dose of a mescaline derivative at the hands of Army Chemical Corps doctors conducting experiments at the NY Psychiatric Hospital. Involved in the initial financial settlement with the Blauer family was President Eisenhower’s Assistant Attorney General Warren Burger who is alleged to have buried the Army’s role in the tragedy. Just three months after the MKULTRA operation was alleged to have been closed down, with Col. Schmidt dead center in the effort, Warren Burger was sitting in Dir. Hoover’s office a day after Schmidt had been. ACSI’s Dorothe Matlack, in 1963, was working closely with Col. Sam Kail who is prominent in Lafitte’s datebook in the last half of 1963. An excerpt from co-author Alan Kent’s essay entitled “A Well-Concealed ‘T’ gives us a glimpse into the potential significance: “As George de Mohrenschildt prepared to venture into Haiti in the spring of 1963, he and his Haitian business partner Clémard Charles were being closely monitored for possible use by both CIA and military intelligence. Dorothe Matlack, Army Intelligence’s chief liaison with CIA, was on top of this effort, and she leaned heavily on the “smooth operator,” Sam Kail. CIA’s Domestic Operation Division, headed by Tracy Barnes, was also involved in the de Mohrenschildt-Charles matter.”

See later response . . .

Steve, I'm referring to US reports that it was unclear whether Mertz or Souetre was detained and then expelled from the US, and that at a later date, French DST produced photos of Souetre with a caption Michel Mertz.

Gary Shaw interviewed the agents responsible for the region. He and Bud Fensterwald realized the potential significance and went in pursuit of Souetre and the attendant discrepancies. Where is the full 14-page report from 1964? And, at the risk of repetition, why would the DST misidentify Souetre as Mertz? The initial inquiry of American intel about the expulsion of Souetre included a photo of Souetre, so why, years later (presumably, although we don't have a date for the publication of the erroneously captioned photos of Jean Souetre), did the French choose to mislead?

Steve, Was Rose Asst. Chief ASCI at the time? I believe Rose may be the name we settled on as having met with Hoover on 12/11. The name is redacted in Hoover's calendar for some reason.

I agree Paul. The relevance is Crichton's access and the credibility he would have enjoyed among an element of the DPD, sufficient to get them on board with anything he required. The ease with which he inserted Ilya Mamantov into the scenario within hours of the assassination is indicative. Sam Kail, who worked along side Matlack during this period, appears frequently in the Lafitte record. Also, you may recall our search for the ASCI official who met with J. Edgar Hoover on December 11?

Thanks, Steve. "Strategic . . . " aligns with "covert petrochemical intelligence studies,", i.e. designed to support a specific industry, but why would Crichton be permitted to use "488th" if a detachment that fell within the formal structure used the same ident? We recently traced who Crichton would have reported to if his detachment met the standards of official structure. The 112th.

Steve, previously in this thread I wrote, "Yes, we can be certain the 488th was a legitimate military intel unit. According to a brief blurb in the DMN in July 1963, the 488th was one of only two from Texas ordered to train at the Pentagon that summer." I trust you agree that at least one 488th did train at the Pentagon that summer. Crichton's schedule for the month allows a window for him to have been in DC, but the article doesn't state specifically it was his 488th.

Thanks Steve, and we're not necessarily at odds on this matter. We frequently encounter those who insist that the plot conformed to a proscribed institutional structure, so I can understand if you and others argue Crichton couldn't have been involved because his military unit was in name only, or as you suggest, guys dressing up playing soldier. However, when you read Coup, you'll note that we don't argue "THE military" was overtly behind the plot to assassinate. We do identify that Jack Crichton had pull at a local, state, national and international level within the oil industry, that he had served in the OSS, that he knew Otto Skorzeny since the early 1950s, that he worked for the Bronfman's Empire Trust, that he traveled to the Middle East frequently, that he was in Romania with representatives from Standard Oil in October of '63, that his 488th was created to provide covert petrochemical intelligence studies at home and abroad, including in the Soviet Union. And that he appears in the records of one Pierre Lafitte, project manager of the Dallas plot. I'm curious if you concur that Col. Whitmeyer was in Crichton's 488th, as was Frank "Brandy" Brandstetter who also appears in Lafitte's records?

Agree. I think most seasoned researchers know that in 1963, the DPD didn't have on their payroll some 600 high ranking officers. That said, we still should have been more precise. I wonder if anyone on the forum has researched motorcycle patrolman Don A. Byrd who served under Capt. Gannaway in November 1963? In 1969 he became assistant chief, then left for ABQ and returned in 1973, a decade after the assassination to become Chief of Police.

I agree, Steve. I should have caught the contradiction. Mea culpa. . Even though credible sources over the years have "repeatedly estimated", Crichton made clear that approximately 50% of his 100 member-488th were also DPD ... or — using your figures — only 8.333% of the DPD. (I admit I'm surprised by the 600 ... presumably that included a wide range of rank in the department?) Percentages aside — and I'm not discounting our misleading preface to Crichton's own statement — I'm interested in your reaction to the fact that the 488th trained at the Pentagon in July of 1963, and that evidence secured by Hank Albarelli establishes Crichton's involvement in the plan to assassinate Kennedy in Dallas?

DALLAS . . . LAY OF THE LAND Dallas… Dallas, ah goodness, I’m not sure what to say… I wasn’t there anywhere near as often as Pierre… not at all. But Pierre would say it was… Dallas was like the arms and legs of the American secret service, your CIA…. —Rene Lafitte Rene says oil smooths the way to silent, and sometimes deadly, change. — Lafitte notes The lay of the land… lay of the land, Dallas —Lafitte datebook, November 19, 1963 . . . Jack Crichton In 1963, the president of Republic National Bank—parent company of Bob Storey’s Lakewood Bank & Trust—and reporting directly to chairman Karl Hoblitzelle was James W. Aston who was also engaged in a number of private pursuits including oil ventures with one John Alston “Jack” Crichton, the ultraconservative oilman who has long been suspected of involvement in the assassination. This book lays to rest any doubt of Crichton’s role in the COUP of November 22, 1963. According to esteemed assassination researcher and author Prof. Peter D. Scott, Crichton signed on as director of the newly formed H. L. Hunt Foundation as evidenced in a document dated July 22, 1963, one day after Crichton’s 488th Military Intelligence concluded annual training. In 1956, while engaged in machinations in Batista’s Cuba, Crichton had time and inclination to organize the 488th which he headquartered in Dallas, with himself ultimately responsible. The stated focus of the unit was covert petrochemical intelligence studies at home and abroad, including in the Soviet Union. In direct control of the unit was Lt. Col. George Whitmeyer, commander of all Army Reserve units in oil-rich East Texas, home of Delta Drilling. Delta had been integral to the 1952 Meadows-Skorzeny venture in Spain. It has been repeatedly estimated that at least fifty percent of the Dallas Police Department’s officers and detectives were members of the 488th Intelligence Detachment. During an interview about the 488th, Crichton claimed there were “about a hundred men in the unit and about forty or fifty of them were from the Dallas Police Department.” The 488th annual training in ’63 took place at The Pentagon, one of only two attachments from Texas to be in DC that summer. Contributing to Crichton’s joining the board of the Hunt Foundation that summer was his shared political views with H. L. Hunt, the eccentric oilman who, but for his wealth might never have been taken seriously. Their rigid position on segregation was best exemplified during Crichton’s 1964 run for Texas governor when he argued against “the unjust, unconstitutional federally forced desegregation in the state of Texas.” In light of datebook entries referring to meetings with Jack Crichton through the year, it is possible that he also served as conduit for funding from H. L. Hunt. — "Coup in Dallas: The Decisive Investigation into Who Killed JFK" by H. P. Albarelli Jr. with Leslie Sharp and Alan Kent. Skyhorse Publishing, November 2019.

Mr. Montenegro's posts are his own, Matthew. Conflating them with the excerpts I provided is illogical. It's fascinating that the First Amendment is a cornerstone of the democracy Kennedy died defending, yet a number of assassination research forums have assumed antithetical attributes under the guise of "tough parenting"? I believe you're reacting to the Postscript emotionally so there's really no need for further discussion. However, the invitation stands . . . if you spot any historical inaccuracies, please cite them here.

Paul, I'm scouring notes to confirm that Crichton himself stated he was a signatory of the American Committee for Aid to Katanga Freed Fighters. I don't own his book, but I'm virtually certain he mentions it; otherwise Hank had every reason to trust Major Ganis' source. I do have a copy of a January 1963 Washington Post advert for the Committee that includes a partial list of notable members which included Eastland as you note, as well as Gen. Charles Willoughby, Sen. Thomas Dodd, Wm. Buckley, James Burnham, Robert Morris, and fascinatingly, Albert Schweitzer. Yes, we can be certain the 488th was a legitimate military intel unit. According to a brief blurb in the DMN in July 1963, the 488th was one of only two from Texas ordered to train at the Pentagon that summer. A snippet from Coup . . . DALLAS . . . LAY OF THE LAND Dallas… Dallas, ah goodness, I’m not sure what to say… I wasn’t there anywhere near as often as Pierre… not at all. But Pierre would say it was… Dallas was like the arms and legs of the American secret service, your CIA…. —Rene Lafitte Rene says oil smooths the way to silent, and sometimes deadly, change. — Lafitte notes The lay of the land… lay of the land, Dallas —Lafitte datebook, November 19, 1963 . . . Jack Crichton In 1963, the president of Republic National Bank—parent company of Bob Storey’s Lakewood Bank & Trust—and reporting directly to chairman Karl Hoblitzelle was James W. Aston who was also engaged in a number of private pursuits including oil ventures with one John Alston “Jack” Crichton, the ultraconservative oilman who has long been suspected of involvement in the assassination. This book lays to rest any doubt of Crichton’s role in the COUP of November 22, 1963. According to esteemed assassination researcher and author Prof. Peter D. Scott, Crichton signed on as director of the newly formed H. L. Hunt Foundation as evidenced in a document dated July 22, 1963, one day after Crichton’s 488th Military Intelligence concluded annual training. In 1956, while engaged in machinations in Batista’s Cuba, Crichton had time and inclination to organize the 488th which he headquartered in Dallas, with himself ultimately responsible. The stated focus of the unit was covert petrochemical intelligence studies at home and abroad, including in the Soviet Union. In direct control of the unit was Lt. Col. George Whitmeyer, commander of all Army Reserve units in oil-rich East Texas, home of Delta Drilling. Delta had been integral to the 1952 Meadows-Skorzeny venture in Spain. It has been repeatedly estimated that at least fifty percent of the Dallas Police Department’s officers and detectives were members of the 488th Intelligence Detachment. During an interview about the 488th, Crichton claimed there were “about a hundred men in the unit and about forty or fifty of them were from the Dallas Police Department.” The 488th annual training in ’63 took place at The Pentagon, one of only two attachments from Texas to be in DC that summer. Contributing to Crichton’s joining the board of the Hunt Foundation that summer was his shared political views with H. L. Hunt, the eccentric oilman who, but for his wealth might never have been taken seriously. Their rigid position on segregation was best exemplified during Crichton’s 1964 run for Texas governor when he argued against “the unjust, unconstitutional federally forced desegregation in the state of Texas.” In light of datebook entries referring to meetings with Jack Crichton through the year, it is possible that he also served as conduit for funding from H. L. Hunt.

Matthew, to satisfy my own curiousity, I searched my Co-author’s Postscript in Coup for the words support(s) and supporter(s) to find only three instances (see below): one is reference to Goldwater having attracted a fringe (border or outer edge) element of the GOP which I doubt anyone who knows this history would challenge; one is a simple reference to those who backed Ronald Reagan; the final is embedded in a direct quote by a conservative writer. Let me know if I overlooked any instances, and/or if you’ve come across the blanket term, “Trump supporters” or “supporters of Trump” or variations thereof in the Postscript? Otherwise, is it possible that defensiveness clouds your objective analysis? For the benefit of those unfamiliar with the Postscript, following are the relevant references . . . Stone’s inspiration, Barry Goldwater—acknowledged as having started the twentieth century conservative revolution—had garnered the endorsement and support of what was referred to as a fringe element of the party. In fact, the John Birch Society had been hugely successful in recruiting followers and securing votes for Goldwater. JBS spokesmen had included Isaac Levine’s mentor and AFC member Arthur Kohlberg. JBS leaders included McCarthy Hearings investigator Robert Morris, and Generals Charles Willoughby and Edwin Walker, both of whom Pierre Lafitte identifies as having been directly involved in the assassination of John Kennedy. In 1980, Stone and Manafort’s firm had gotten behind the presidential candidacy of California Governor Ronald Reagan. When Stone was provided a Rolodex of New York supporters of the governor, the only name he considered of value was Roy Cohn. *** To his credit, in a piece for the National Review founded by William F. Buckley—whose own attempts to disenfranchise the dangerous fringe of his party, the John Birch Society, had slowed their momentum—fellow conservative writer Windsor Mann summarized, “Buchanan's brand of populist-nationalism is no longer marginal on the right. It is ascendant. A year after National Review released its ‘Against Trump’ issue, it ran a cover story making the case for nationalism. [Fox News pundit] Tucker Carlson discarded his libertarianism in favor of right-wing nanny-statism. Bennett, who accused Buchanan of ‘flirting with fascism,’ supports Trump, who quoted Benito Mussolini, the founder of fascism, approvingly [stating ‘it's a very good quote’].” According to Mann, Trump made this state of affairs possible, and Buchanan made Trump possible. He writes, “Just as Barry Goldwater's defeat in 1964 precipitated Ronald Reagan's victory in 1980, Buchanan's presidential campaigns in 1992, 1996, and 2000, laid the groundwork for Trump's presidency. His three candidacies exposed fissures on the right and showed Trump that there was an untapped market for nativism, protectionism, and isolationism.” Mann also called attention to a quote which Donald Trump had borrowed from an online account, @ildulce2016: “It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep.” We know that it was Il Dulce, the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, who was rescued by Hitler’s favorite commando, SS Otto Skorzeny; we also know that it was Skorzeny, captured in a cordial if not flagrantly warm photo with Benito’s son Romano in 1960, who served as the tactician for the plot to assassinate John Kennedy in Dallas. *** Matthew, the term NATZI [sic] appears in the following excerpts from the Postscript. Please let me know if you find anything historically inaccurate. According to the authors of NATZI [sic] Hydra, the America First Committee was not originally created to help the NATZI [sic]S; however, thanks to one of the original founders of the AFC [America First Committee],, General Robert E. Wood, pro-NATZIS [sic] from the Silver Shirts and the KKK—whose practice of wearing white hoods had been mimicked by the malicious band of terrorists, La Cagoule—were welcome. The AFC isolationist movement had, in the late 1930s, opted to ignore the diabolical threat that NATZI [sic] Party Fuhrer Adolf Hitler posed to Jews, Romas, homosexuals and “the other” throughout Europe, arguing that America should not engage in deep-rooted “conflicts” outside her shores. Tragically, the undertow proved to be a subtle sympathy for—and for some, an endorsement of—the NATZI [sic]’ anti-Semitism, racism, anti-immigration and homophobia. The founding members of AFC, many of whom genuinely believed that the US should not be drug into a war in Europe, would soon find themselves standing alongside pro-fascist groups wishing to see Hitler and dictators Mussolini and Franco succeed. Parallels of the effectiveness of General Wood’s extreme arm within the AFC in creating an umbrella for a racist, anti-immigration, homophobic movement re-emerged with a vengeance during the US presidential campaign of 2016. *** In response to questions about the 2016 campaign and election, William “Bill” Regnery, grandson of one of the founders of the America First Committee and nephew of publisher Henry Regnery, seemingly appreciated the archetypal role filled by Donald Trump when he reached for a word to describe the effect: “I think Trump was a legitimizer,” he argued. White nationalism “went from being a conversation you could hold in a bathroom, to the front parlor,” said Regnery. His family publishing house, Regnery Publishing’s first two titles had been critical of the Nuremberg Trials, and the third was a pro-NATZI [sic] book attacking the Allied air campaign of WWII. By 1954, Regnery was doing its part in advancing the Cold War with publication of books for the John Birch Society. According to CIA agent E. Howard Hunt, who is cited in the Lafitte records, the agency had subsidized Regnery because of “its pro-NATZI [sic] stance.” Hunt had been central to many CIA operations run by CIA officer Tracy Barnes. It was Bill Regnery who philosophically and financially mentored what became known in the mid-2000s as the “alt-right.” Avowed Neo-NATZI [sic] Richard Spencer served as his spokesman. While at Duke University, Spencer had brushed against a future advisor to the 45th president, Stephen Miller, who would later serve as aid to Senator and future Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Together, the two archconservatives formulated the idea of “nation-state populism”, an economic nationalist movement modeled on the populism of Andrew Jackson, the senator from Tennessee before becoming the seventh president of the United States whose harsh policies toward enslaved people and Native Americans are a blight on America’s past. Nation-state populism would greatly influence the Trump anti-immigration campaign. Ten years earlier, in 2005, Bill Regnery had formed the National Policy Institute. The first NPI chairman, Louis R. Andrews explained that in the 2008 election, he had voted for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama because, “I want to see the Republican Party destroyed so it can be reborn as a party representing the interests of white people, not entrenched corporate elites.” In a July 2017 piece titled, “The Moneyman Behind the Alt-Right,” BuzzFeed reporters Aram Roston and Joel Anderson noted, “Suddenly, the seed money Regnery had doled out—often in small grants under $25,000—started to show returns. The alt-right became a political force, trolling America with obscure philosophizing, pro-Trump messages, and outright racism, while Richard Spencer gave Regnery’s movement of aging white nationalists a clean-shaven, camera-ready face. Since Trump’s win, the movement has only gained prominence.” *** The Foreshadowing Friendship It was Joe McCarthy’s legal counsel Roy Cohn, a founding member of the American Jewish League Against Communism with Isaac Don Levine, that would later leave an ethical and philosophical imprint on a brash young man from Queens, Donald J. Trump. By the time Cohn first met him in 1973, Trump was already in line to inherit control of his father’s real estate empire, but it was Cohn, as much as Trump’s father who was a known NATZI [sic] sympathizer, that schooled the would-be real estate tycoon in the art of war in business, inculcating in Donald his own disdain for democratic government and its institutions. In the estimation of British historian Erick Hobsbawm, author of “Uncommon People: Resistance, Rebellion and Jazz,” Cohn made his legal and political career “in a milieu where money and power override rules and law—indeed where the ability to get, and get away with, what lesser citizens cannot, is what proves membership of an elite.” In an interview for their July 1981 issue, Cohn told Penthouse Magazine, “I decided long ago to make up my own rules.” *** Resurrecting America First ideology, Donald Trump initially attracted millions of moderate conservatives of the Republican party [emphasis added]; but alongside them, not unlike the influence General Wood had over the America First Committee of the late 1930s, Trump galvanized nascent white supremacists, anti-Semites, staunch racist anti-immigrationists, Christian evangelicals harboring homophobic prejudice, and unrepentant crypto fascists and Neo-NATZI [sic]S, all of whom found themselves welcome under his tent once he descended the escalator of his prize flagship property, Manhattan’s Trump Tower, to announce his candidacy for Republican nominee for president of the United States. *** Several weeks before Hank Albarelli suffered a health crisis that would soon take his life in June 2019, he summarized for this coauthor, I think serious consideration should be given now to doing 3-4 end pages that speak generally to Fourth Reich. Rise of—revamped to these times but true NATZI [sic]SM—good way to end the book.

The absurd prohibition of referring to National Socialistsm [N A T Z I S M?] by name because it might "offend" should be obnoxious to any researcher attempting to record the complete historical context of the successful plot to assassinate President Kennedy in Dallas.

Tks for this, Steve, and you may already have the Waverly Root article, Neo- N a t z i s sic] Linked to French Algeria. (as a side note, I find it bizarre that a forum purporting to uphold freedom of speech prohibits use of a term that is historically accurate, particularly when one is citing a credible source.) No doubt you’re aware that Otto and Ilse Skorzeny had a residence in Palma de Mallorca. Of possible interest, the following is a replication of the first page of Albarelli's April 2019 submission to the publisher of Coup in Dallas . . . Note that in the upper left-hand corner he typed a ‘note to self and the editor' that we were in the process of incorporating Kovacs, Ortiz, Joly in the final draft M/s. Rene Kovacs Joseph Oritz Pierre Joly Coup in Dallas: Who Killed JFK and Why By H.P. Albarelli Jr. With Leslie Sharp and Alan Kent Organizational and Character Maps by Pete Sattler Introduction by Dick Russell ***** The result of that research appears in this excerpt from Coup . . . Kovacs, Ortiz and Joly There is no clear evidence that any of these three men, or a combination of, were present in Dallas on November 22, 1963, so perhaps the reader might question why they end up in these pages. Simply put, they appear among the outstanding items for research left on the desk of author Albarelli. A February 26, 1962 exposé “Neo-N a t z I s [sic]Linked to Algeria French” by correspondent Waverley Root, then living in Paris, published in The Washington Post, reveals that European extremists—known as Ultras—in Algeria were “now tied in with the worldwide clandestine neo - N a t z i organization which has existed ever since the end of the war, built around a core of Hitlerites who escaped post war justice. The head of this international National Socialist underground has always been believed to be Madrid’s man of mystery, Otto Skorzeny, the SS trooper who rescued Mussolini from his captors.” More chilling, Root continues, “Skorzeny is reported to maintain contacts with former National Socialists scattered throughout the world, especially in Latin America and the Middle East. They have not given up hope that ????? may yet triumph throughout the world, and they seem prepared to lend their aid in any desperate venture of like political ideology which might achieve a Rightest authoritarian government anywhere.” (emphasis added.) Root’s informed sources said that “two of four defendants in the trial escaped and made their way to Spain.” The trial he refers to was the result of the arrest of those involved in the 1957 bazooka attack on General Raoul Salan. The far-right extremists were convinced that the general wasn’t fully on their side to halt the movement toward independence from France in Algeria. All charged with the attack had been found guilty. Among them was Doctor René Kovacs, who was sentenced to death in absentia following his escape. A physician by training, Kovacs was born in Algeria of [notably for our purposes] Hungarian parents. Along with his aide, Joseph Ortiz, a restaurateur and fellow far-right extremist, the two fled to Spain. Root contends that Algerian Europeans devoted to far-right politics had long been alleged to have international connections. “Thus gave birth to any imperfectly known organization called the Red Hand,” writes Root, referring to a mysterious terror group organized to counter the National Liberation Front (FLN) in Algeria. According to freelance journalist Joachim Joesten, among the earliest sleuths to arrive in Dallas in pursuit of the facts of the assassination of Kennedy, the creator of the Red Hand was none other than the head of France’s DST—a man readers are now familiar with—Roger Wybot. Author Ralph Ganis, who pursued Joesten’s findings in depth, tells us that the Red Hand operated in the manner of paramilitary groups that sprang up after WWI of which Otto Skorzeny participated. Writes Ganis, “It was also very similar to the old Cagoule, the ‘hooded ones.’ Waverley Root also concluded that Kovacs and Ortiz, both of whom fled to Spain, were involved in the Skorzeny ring. Rounding out the triad with Kovacs and Ortiz, Root tells us that Belgian citizen Pierre Joly, “turns up regularly in French extreme-right activities of a conspiratorial nature. Joly [whose duties appear to have included propagation of extremist ideology on the printed page] was among those who appeared in Madrid when the refugees from the revolt trial arrived there.” Root then summarizes the significance of these figures ending up in Spain: The existence in Madrid, on territory where extreme Rightists of all countries can reasonably expect to find political refuge of the headquarters of an international neo-National Socialist organization, helps to encourage a funneling of all revolutionary Rightists groups into the same conspiracy. But political kinship tends in any case to throw the like-minded of all countries together, so that even without formal organization there has been built up an intricate maze of cross-relationships among Right extremists of all countries. From there, the correspondent highlights the current crisis in Katanga, a break-away province from the Republic of Congo, which had contributed to the January 17, 1961 assassination of Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba. The success of the operation has been attributed to, among others, Otto Skorzeny. Root draws attention to the likely role played by Algerian Ultras operating outside Toulouse—long a hotbed of French Algerian activity—in delivering three French jet planes from a factory outside Toulouse to Katanga. Of note, on September 25, 1963, Pierre Lafitte writes “LeCatet”; research strongly suggests this could be a location within the commune of Montbeton, north of Toulouse where a number of airfields were located, perhaps related to training camps. As we learned, the American Committee for Aid to Katanga Freedom Fighters included Jack Crichton, the Dallas oilman who had been in business with Otto Skorzeny since 1952 and served as his point man on the 22nd of November.

William, thanks very much for this insight.