Leslie Sharp

5 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Very interesting, Leslie, and I can understand why Russ Baker considered you a useful source of information about GHWB's CIA career in Texas, with Dresser, et.al.

Incidentally, John Simkin, and others, have started a number of interesting EF threads about GHWB and the JFK assassination during the past 20 years.

I also started a thread a few years ago about the alleged photo of 17 year-old Andover preppie, Dubya Bush, in the Dealey Plaza area on 11/22/63.  Was Dubya with his parents in Dallas on 11/22/63?

If you can point me in the direction or describe the photo further I'll check in with a photo expert on FB who is always ready to help.

I wonder when Andover let out for the Thanksgiving holidays, and did Russ describe Zeppa's plane.
 

1 hour ago, Ron Bulman said:

No mam, I don't think you missed it.  My quote was from Mr. Baker's book, as he states "The following Facts have never been recounted by Poppy Bush nor have they appeared in any articles or books - and Barbara herself says nothing about this."  I've never seen it reported anywhere else that GHWB spoke to the American Association of Oil Drilling Contractors on the evening of November 21, 1963 in Dallas Texas.  With likely Mr. Zeppa in attendance as he was a former president of the association and the Bushe's were likely ferried from Dallas to Tyler (and we know) back the next day. 

Interesting that the AAODC claim is not footnoted, rare for Baker in my experience. I'm surprised  he would forego a citation if he (or his primary research asst. at the time, Linda Minor) found the program or other confirmation of the Nov. 21 meeting. And not to belabor the point, but a return flight to Tyler Thursday evening following the meeting would not have been unreasonable, particularly if they hadn't anticipated a return to the D-FW area Friday.

Leslie Sharp has been given my permission to post this in the Education Forum and any other public forum she feels appropriate. I will not being responding to debate. — Andrew Watson

A decade ago I was made aware of an oceanside property in Havana’s ritzy Miramar area. A pleasant mid-century modern home with a pool was a hive of activity pertaining to the undermining of Fidel Castro’s revolution. In particular America’s determination to eliminate a figure head that advocated a justified change, albeit a fundamentally flawed one so many decades later. Ironically at the nexus of this effort was the unlikely femme fatal named Viola June Cobb, a movie star like figure that researchers are beginning to understand her peculiar position in the Latin American centric world of the Cold War. To be fair much of the strangeness can be attributed to her handlers at the CIA that deliberately applied misleading and false attributions as well as mischaracterizations about her. Of great importance is the explosion of the La Coubre munitions ship in Havana’s harbour and the consequential frenzied movements of American assets in and out of the Miramar home where June Cobb lived. Fearing for her life she ran to the safety of the Havana Hilton and her handlers. She was convinced to stay in action within Fidel Castro’s office despite the peril she was in. 

At the time Fidel Castro was the one that could hold together a ragtag government together but he did so with the help of the very powerful Celia Sanchez. Without Celia Sanchez saving the bearded ones in the mountains during the Revolution, history would be much different. It was Celia that hired and enabled June Cobb within the Cuban government and a fellow humanist. Later in life June Cobb revealed to me it was her betrayal to the humanist movement that haunted her and especially her betrayal of Celia Sanchez she regretted the most. Her message of regret was delivered to Celia’s family. It was however Fidel Castro’s failure to secure the support of VP Nixon to build a new Cuba with schools and hospitals that made him extremely vulnerable to the Communist takeover. June Cobb had been wrongly identified or deliberately misidentified as a communist but at her very core she was a humanist. Castro’s submission to the Cuban Communist cause enabled the CIA to utilize June, she loathed Castro’s political positioning warning him that a dictator to the left or a dictator to the right is still a dictator. Eventually things got white hot for June in Cuba so she had to be pulled from her position to be relocated to the CIA’s Mexico City station.

By 1963 Viola June Cobb was fully entrenched in Latin American operations mostly centred around communist activities in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Mexico itself. Of note were her observations of activities at the Hotel Luma in Mexico City and her interactions with certain CIA operatives that somehow or another are connected to the assassination of JFK. To be fair June knew a thing or two but her being an integral part of the assassination has been a great exaggeration. A result of misdirection in the greater mechanization of the CIA itself or more than likely certain devious individuals. Much can be said about the record left that negates June’s strong belief of a better world beyond the Cold War, we need to remind ourselves she was a single woman in a dark world of powerful men. She led an exciting life with a steady pay check until the CIA had run her persona into the ground. She was over exposed and quite frankly damaged goods at the culmination of the Mexican student massacre in the late sixties.

By the time June Cobb attempts to rehab herself in New York City in 1968 she came full circle to further understand her humanist being. Perhaps she had retreated somewhat with the realistic belief that the world she had just come from would forever defeat any chance of a better world. If it weren’t for the various JFK assassination investigations in Washington we would have known nothing or very little about her remarkable life. This is at the point where John Newman and then Hank Albarelli Jr. found June Cobb living her semi reclusive life in New York, not in hiding, not protected and certainly not one to suffer fools. John Newman had gained her confidence eventually attaining a group of documents that June later regretted giving him. She had failed to make copies for Newman and she trusted him to return the originals to her. June made myself aware that these documents were very important to her and were considered of great importance to John Newman’s investigations of the assassination. In a contact I had communicated with Newman later on he revealed to myself that these documents were stolen from his office while no other documents were stolen. This should be of importance in itself yet to date the nature of these documents have not been made aware to the research community. Additionally, John Newman disclosed to myself that he had later found one of June’s documents that he had misfiled. He assured me that he would send me a digital copy for my research into June however after repeated inquiries to doing so he has not done so. Needless to say I don’t have the same level of respect of Newman that others do in fact it further reinforces my opinion of him negatively. Hank Albarelli on the other hand has only further gained a positive opinion by myself the further I delved into discovering the enigmatic June Cobb. I did and will always admire the trusting relationship the two of them had and knowing that the two of them appreciated my respect for them, that goes a long way in my world. Sometimes being a patient researcher can pay off and prior to Hank passing we had touched on us making a documentary film about June centralized upon the hours upon hours of taped conversations they had. Unfortunately this is still in limbo as Hank’s estate deals with Hank’s unfinished business including his book about June. Spoiler alert, Viola June Cobb was not the assassin of JFK which leads us to one my strangest experiences delving into June Cobb’s world of the Cold War.

A little over a year ago I was contacted by a documentary filmmaker named Mary Haverstick, she was researching for for an upcoming book she was writing about female spies of the Cold War. The reason I was being contacted was about my extensive research into June Cobb and the intelligence role she played in Latin America in this time period. Of course I prequalified some of the things I told her that there was a great difference between the role she played as portrayed in the records created by the CIA and her actual real life activities. The interactions I had with Mary were two lengthy phone calls and a series of Messenger conversations. At the time I didn’t think it was appropriate to record the phone conversations, I regrettably admit my guard was down as she was a fellow filmmaker. But most of all I felt that June and her life meant something to be shared. Mary still had my confidence when she announced she had secured a book deal, I messaged her congrats on Messenger.

When the book was released entitled A Woman I Know I quickly downloaded it and gave it a thorough read. Admittedly it’s an enjoyable read however it’s fundamentally flawed as a piece of research material. Partially through the book I realized that the premise of my interactions with Haverstick and what I was reading was revealing her dishonesty. Further reading revealed extensive flawed research and her dangerous partial knowledge of a complex system. Not even some of the best researchers can properly grasp complex intel communications yet this novice does a complete nose dive making a fool of herself. As presented by Mary Haverstick she gained part of her greater understanding intel communications and coding under the guidance of John Newman. Like in many cases a master of something may or may not be a masterful teacher, in Haverstick’s case she has the potential but she’s done a bit of a hit and run with A Woman I Know. 

She’s been able to hide many research sins by slinking behind a curtain, this curtain is the use of narrative which is a documentary film trick. Michael Moore is the master of this such as in his movie Sicko where he uses the virtues of the Cuban health care system by showing a private hospital for foreigners. While Moore isn’t wrong about the hospital itself, what he’s showing you is that he’s absolutely wrong to indicate this is the standard of Cuban hospitals for the people. The reality is something else. Haverstick has used the “narrative” of her relationship with Jerrie Cobb and the garden path Jerrie leads her down as a cover. A cover that works well beyond the research community for those that can enjoy a fictional spy novel. It’s abundantly clear that her editor for her publishing company either deliberately or incompetently negated historical factuality in the editing process. As for the historical accuracy, in particular events and actions attributed to Viola June Cobb are best considered gobbledygook extrapolated from deliberately false intel story lines. Ironically Haverstick uses certain examples of intel tradecraft to build her thesis yet at the same time ignores others for the convenience of her preposterous theories.

Of great concern is that Haverstick’s overreaching tale is based on suggestive cues she extrapolates from her times with Jerrie Cobb. In particular Haverstick prompts Jerrie Cobb which then results in vague responses that can be interpreted a hundred different ways. This song and dance routine is conveniently excused with the notion that Jerrie signed the CIA’s lifetime nondisclosure agreement without a shred of evidence tracing that Jerrie actually worked for the CIA. Since the release of Haverstick’s book some of the top researchers have combed the available digital files combined with their own years of research knowledge in the assassination to verify Jerrie Cobb’s suggestive claims and Haverstick’s own assumptions. In fact Haverstick identifying her as the legendary QJWIN the assassin’s manager is absolutely ridiculous. It even gets worse than this with the suggestion that either Jerrie or June Cobb is the mythical Babushka with a camera gun delivering JFK’s coup de grâce.

Since the release of Haverstick’s A Woman I Know last November the reviews on Google Books have been quite favourable much of which can be attributing to Haverstick’s pleading with her Facebook friends to post a review. I ignored her plea for many obvious reasons. Upon examination of these book reviews you can only extrapolate only one theme, the readers enjoyed Haverstick’s storytelling. I would add that this is fictional storytelling loosely based on actual events such as the disclaimer you see on Hollywood films. Of the accomplished assassination research experts very few have shown any support for Haverstick’s book, crickets you may say. Even Haverstick’s mentor John Newman has been silent, not a peep out of him. Oddly her interactions with well respected researcher Lisa Pease may have suggested that Lisa was on Team Haverstick. Not so. Lisa’s FB post of January 18th or 19th about A Woman I Know is supportive somewhat liking Mary’s narrative adventure and her bringing forth the fact that many women from the Cold War intel world have been overlooked for their importance. Something that I realized a decade ago when a colleague dared me to find the elusive Viola June Cobb which I indeed did. Lisa Pease in a very polite way has however dismissed Haverstick’s wild extrapolations of fact.

In the ruckus world of JFK assassination research you can get angered, frustrated and have acceptable disagreements which indeed interferes with what the goal is. To solve the riddle has taken the pooling of brilliant minds, many of whom my path has crossed in the previous decade. I mourn the fact that some have publicly and privately discredited, attacked and smeared the professional reputations of Viola June Cobb and Hank Albarelli. They are no longer here to defend themselves and it should sadden all of us that what Albarelli stumbled upon, the Lafitte planner has yet to alarm a nation that needs to be alarmed. Albarelli’s monumental work in his Coup in Dallas is as important or not more important than David Talbot’s Devil’s Chessboard yet here we are in some type of dystopia.

In my lengthy and ongoing conversations with Coup in Dallas coauthor Leslie Sharp she has meticulously drilled down on my interactions with June and Hank. She’s tough in a good way, a way that will extract the tiny crumbs that are being put back together to complete a complex puzzle. The level of meticulous investigative work and endless networking she has undertaken since Hank’s death is astounding. I can assure you that neither her or anyone in the network she’s built are getting rich or will ever get rich from the Herculean effort underway. It’s a passion, a passion to bring forth the unfinished work of Hank Albarelli and that little book he stumbled upon while interviewing Pierre Lafitte’s widow, Renee. It’s a calling to identify the devils that killed JFK back in 1963 but also the long arc that Albarelli correctly identified as the fascist underbelly at play causing so much peril today. This is also the same circumstances that Viola June Cobb walks away from in 1968 when she felt so alone after seeing such a darkness in humanity. All alone, she couldn’t challenge the power even though a shift in public opinion was underway. Her observations, her secrets and conclusions had been locked away in her brain for decades until a gentile gentleman gently coaxed them out of her. June asserted to me Hank had her full trust unlike the troubling interactions she had with John Newman. Hank had purchased her a cell phone (The one I could contact her on), they would talk for hours upon hours which was recorded creating a library of first hand records. These tapes were for Hank’s pending book about June but they were also to be at the heart of a documentary Hank and I would produce. As an in introduction to this film we were considering using June’s transcript of her CIA interview prior to her deep dive into Cuba. She reveals much of her life’s experiences to that point in time and her desires for her future life. 

The contents of the audio tapes Hank had made with June were only known by the two of them. Neither myself, Leslie Sharp or Hank’s family were made aware of the contents of the tapes. What I personally know is Hank revealed to myself that June had been a witness to or aware of events that was leading Hank to something of great importance in JFK’s assassination. He was holding his cards very closely much in the same way he did for years with the Lafitte planner. 

I don’t particularly care for Mary Haverstick’s hit and run technique which is amplified by her tendency to selectively choose facts while ignoring facts not matching her wild assertions. In my communications with Haverstick I assured her that Hank’s material on June Cobb was solid and deviating from that would be foolish. I do want to remind Haverstick that Viola June Cobb served her country and had suffered for decades until her death because of her service. She was NOT a CIA agent as Haverstick repeatedly and wrongfully asserts, she was a CIA asset without the benefits that would have made her later years in life easier. If she had only done her research she would have known about the shoddy conditions June lived in prior to Hank and others arranging a seniors home in New Rochelle. Equally so, she shouldn’t have ignored the stellar reputation of Hank’s investigative brilliance. Haverstick’s complete disregard of these two very good people that I wish I could have gotten to know better does perplex me. The old adage applies here, to get respect you need to show respect. Haverstick betrayed my trust and at this point I must wonder how many others she had done so in order to frame her wild story. After reading her book I told myself to not involve myself with trivial debate about it however some have unfortunately fallen victim to Haverstick’s wild assertions. I can’t undo the damage Haverstick’s done but I can damn well do my part in helping Leslie Sharp and crew truly get to the bottom of America’s Great Clusterxxxx. RIP Viola June Cobb and Hank Albarelli Jr., we will prevail.

If Jack Canon is now an acceptable candidate for shooter in Dallas, how did his Texas compadre — the award-winning sharpshooter Col. Charles Askins avoid close scrutiny prior to finalization of this podcast?

Hired Guns

Askins?

—Lafitte datebook, September 12, 1963

Askins - Willoughby OK

—Lafitte datebook, October 2, 1963

. . . Add Askins (Harvey)

—Lafitte datebook, October 8, 1963 

Canon-- S + V?

—Lafitte datebook, September 14 1963

Willoughby team – Canon (Z org) D.

—Lafitte datebook, November 21, 1963

Col. Charles “Boots” Askins, Jr.

Boots Askins was a storied gunman in Texas since the early 1930s, and had moved within far-right circles all his life. Author Jeffrey Caufield, in his study of the assassination of JFK, features a letter from Joseph Milteer (himself a racist and far right associate of Willoughby and Walker) to Charles Askins pertaining to a forthcoming meeting of one of the myriad clandestine organizations that the radical right was running during the ’60s, indicating very “hush-hush” stuff.

Born in October 1907, the son of a prominent hunter and writer, Askins Jr. followed in his father’s footprints and, according to legend, "left some marks deeper than his dad." Prior to enlisting in the US Army, Askins had served in the US Forest Service and Border Patrol in the American Southwest.

During WWII, he served as a battlefield recovery officer, making landings in North Africa, Italy, and D-day. Following the war, he was posted in Spain as an attaché to the American embassy, assisting Franco’s administration in rebuilding the arms and ammunition factories after the war. This is but one clue that Askins was well known to General Willoughby and through that connection, he knew fellow Texan “Cactus Jack” Canon. In his role at the embassy in Madrid, Askins undoubtedly encountered Johannes Bernhardt of SOFINDUS, Otto Skorzeny, and Victor Oswald, all of whom need no further introduction to our reader. As attaché, Askins would also have been familiar with US Embassy officials including CIA agent Al Ulmer, and fellow attaché Jere Wittington, Otto and Ilse’s close friend and minder. [In fact, a document recently surfaced in a newly released batch to confirm that Askins was assigned to keep an eye on Otto’s munitions deals in Madrid.]

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.”

(cont. in forthcoming sequel to CiD)

Askins' role with the Texas Border Patrol has come into focus recently following research into the history of the head of Southwest Region Immigration and Naturalization Services in 1963, Harlon B. Carter.

Answers to questions regarding unimpeded infiltration and exfiltration of shooters brought on board the assassination plot [by Otto Skorzeny and Charles Willoughby] can now be considered through the INS lens, not just the FBI.   Harlon Carter and Charles Askins go back to pre-WWII Texas when both launched careers in the Border Patrol.  While Askins attained notoriety as an expert marksman and then served in Europe, Carter advanced to become head of the entire Patrol, gaining infamy for his Bracero Program: in essence, let undocumented workers cross unimpeded as long as they went back home when their masters were finished extracting blood, sweat, and tears for ten cents on the dollar.

Harlon Carter would leave the INS several years after the assassination in Dallas to launch an operation that culminated in a coup within the National Rifle Association known as the Revolt at Cincinnati. Basically, Carter altered the NRA mandate from one of a once beloved sportsman’s association to a full fledge political lobby in service of the private interests of the arms and munitions industry.

[reverse dot-connecting from the NRA to Jean Souetre:]

Many in the research community will know that the myriad of discrepancies in the Jean Rene Souetre saga resurfaced in 2003 when the head of an LA-based mail order firm that had enjoyed a rather sensational contract with the NRA for more than a decade, hired a French reporter to “interview” Souetre and then published her findings.  According to the transcript, the former OAS Captain insisted he wasn’t in Dallas, pointed the finger at Michel Mertz, and Bradley O’Leary advanced Souetre’s claims as fait accompli in “The Triangle of Death.”  Prior to publication of his book, O’Leary co-produced the documentary filmed primarily in Moscow titled “The Secret KGB JFK Assassination Files” that also relies on the research leading to claims of Souetre’s innocence.  Would this 1999 documentary effort have been approved by the director of the FSB, successor to the KGB?

What isn’t widely known is that O’Leary landed that NRA contract through his personal association with Wayne LaPierre, the protegé of the former head of INS SW Harlon Carter who was a decades-long buddy of sharpshooter Charles Askins identified in the records of Pierre Lafitte. Following Carter’s death, Wayne LaPierre ran the NRA with a similar iron fist for another three decades, and it was LaPierre and his executive committee that authorized the $30,000,000 contribution to the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump not long after certain NRA leaders returned from a trip to Russia. In 2020, among those issues that surfaced during NY AG Letitia James’ investigation was LaPierre’s shelling out millions to mail order king Brad O’Leary — who in 1999 and again in 2003 attempted to cement Souetre’s innocence.

A member of NRA remarked recently that he had been paying dues since 1976 and that he could not recall a single article in the association magazine about the assassination of President John Kennedy in Dallas.

17 minutes ago, Ron Bulman said:

I've never read of that, that I remember, is it in ATM or CID?  

Could the Hughes be Allan Hughes, electronics expert involved in the Greenspun story and Cuba on loan to the CIA from ?

Indeed, and yes, another "Hughes" — Allan in context of his pharma front —does surface in PL financial records.  

This particular Hughes entry though, in context of the surrounding days, fits with the whole Nicaragua op and history with William Morgan, John Wilson-Hudson, and the Chinese embassy gig guys whose names I forget.

If you mean the Ella op, it fills a chapter in Coup.  I think Scotty McLeod ended up on the cutting room floor; saved for paperback or sequel.

1 hour ago, Ron Bulman said:

So, Pierre knew Maheu and did work for him.  I read something earlier today about Al Ulmer working for the CIA, for/with/at the same time Maheu did.  Interesting.  Pierre would have been working on projects for them at that time.  Thus, he would have known both at the time of the JFKA.  FWIW.

Ulmer only retired, nominally?, in 1962 or early 1963 to go to work for Niarchos in London.  He was first posted in Athens station, maybe at the end of the war. If I recall correctly, the timing coincided with Joannides' recruitment.  

A "Hughes' is mentioned in Lafitte records from the early 1960s, but Hank was convinced the reference is to Paul Hughes pilot mercenary not Howard.

Of interest — but deep into the weeds — is Maheu's history with FBI Scotty McLeod who ended up as Ike's Ambassador to Ireland, preceding Kennedy's buddy Grant Stockade who was business partners with, among others, George Smathers and Bobby Baker. Writing stream of consciousness, I believe Meltzer (in a business venture with Lafitte) and Yazbek figure in this milieu. 

It would have been McLeod who was in a position to influence the Irish residence visas being sought by Otto and Ilse.  Stockdale would take up his post in Dublin and even entertain the Skorzenys in Phoenix Park before he was recalled by JFK. He was replaced by another Kennedy funder who was heavily invested in Harco, the Haiti project with Texas Oilman Clint Murchison.  Harco had significant overlap with Smathers' et al ServU Corp.

Aside from Smathers' role in landing Judyth Baker in New Orleans in time to meet LHO, Bobby Baker was running the operation to implicate JFK with East German femme fatale Ella Rometsch. Lafitte details that op. 

1 hour ago, Ron Bulman said:

Leslie, I mentioned Barbra's letter mainly as a contradiction to GHWB's prior vague statements that he was "somewhere" in Texas when asked.  It is an odd (non) letter, she lists excerpts from it in her memoirs per Baker in Family of Secrets. 

"On November 22,1963, George and I were in the middle of a several city swing.  I was getting my hair done in Tyler, Texas, working on a letter home.  Here are some excerpts.  I am writing this from the Beauty Parlor and the radio says the president has been shot.  . . . ...Since the Beauty Parlor the President has died.  We are once again on a plane.  This time a commercial plane.  Poppy picked me up from the beauty parlor - we went right to the airport, flew to Fort Worth and dropped off Mr. Zeppo (we were on his plane) (yes, she calls Zeppa Zeppo here) and flew back to Dallas.  . . . Pop got us tickets back to Houston . . .  The rumors are flying about that horrid assassin.  We are hoping that is not some far right nut, but a "commie" nut.

All her kids at home were 10 years old or younger, W was off at prep school in New England (supposedly, or home for Thanksgiving, or some think possibly in Dealy Plaza).  She was not close to her family at this point, her siblings had moved off, she had not attended her mother's funeral.  Pg. 53, FOS.

Regarding, "Seems to me though that I recall seeing a photograph to argue they were in Dallas on the 21st??   Maybe @Ron Bulman remembers it?"  I don't recall seeing any photo's of Poppy on the 21'st.  But there is this from pg. 59 of FOS.

"The following Facts have never been recounted by Poppy Bush nor have they appeared in any articles or books - and Barbara herself says nothing about this.  On the evening of November 21, 1963, Poppy Bush spoke to a gathering of the American Association of Oil Drilling Contractors (AAODC) at the Sheraton Hotel in Dallas.  Since Zeppa himself was a former president of the AAODC, it is likely he attended the gathering.  It is also likely that both Zeppa and the Bushes actually spent the night in Dallas - and that they were in Dallas the next morning: the day Kennedy was assassinated."

What was Hank's saying, high strangeness and synchronicity?

 

The Zeppa history with Skorzeny and Meadows while his friend Al Ulmer was posted in Madrid, and Crichton, and Lone Star Steel — one of Texas' largest military contractors during and post WWII — as laid out in my previous post remains significant regardless of where Barbara, George and Joe were on the evening of November 21.  That said, did I miss a link to news coverage of AAODC or the programme roster?  Can it be coincidence the association scheduled their meeting that week.  I'm thinking of a similar serendipity that the American Legion national convention was on the books for summer 1964 ... to heal the city's wounds? 

1 hour ago, W. Niederhut said:

Leslie,

      Russ Baker talks about this subject in detail in Family of Secrets.

      Barbara Bush claimed (in her autobiography, if I recall correctly) that she had written a rather elaborate, detailed letter to her young children on 11/22/63, describing the remarkably convoluted history of her alleged itinerary with Poppy on 11/22/63.

      But Baker highlighted a number of strange anomalies about the "legendary" letter.  For one thing, she and Poppy returned to Houston that evening.  Why write a detailed letter to her kids about the day?

     Additionally, the diction and Jane Austen-like formality of the letter to young Jeb, Neil, et.al. was rather odd, considering their age and the fact that she was their mother.  As Joseph McBride and I (and the forum) discussed a few years ago, George W. Bush would have been 17 at the time, and he was either at Andover, or on Thanksgiving break in Dallas with Poppy and Mommy-- not at home in Houston.

       I have long wondered if Dubya Bush ever made any public statements about where he was on 11/22/63.

       Some people have even wondered if young Dubya Bush was in Dealey Plaza.  (photo below)

Another strange and long buried coincidence, Dubya went to school in Midland with Billy Lord — not the same class but within a couple of years — who sailed from New Orleans on the SS Lykes line with Oswald.  Somewhere there is a photo of a classmate of theirs from Midland — sitting on the curb with George de Mohrenshcildt (with his Airedale terrier) in front of deM's Travis street condo. (fifteen years later I was living in the same block on Travis.) This reinforces the tightly integrated nature of the independent oil cabal in Texas. 

@Cory Santos Cory, let me know if you would prefer I launch an independent thread related to this recent exchange focused on GHWBush whereabouts on 11.22.63.  I don't mean to hijack Nixon!  🙂

1 hour ago, W. Niederhut said:

Leslie,

      Russ Baker talks about this subject in detail in Family of Secrets.

      Barbara Bush claimed (in her autobiography, if I recall correctly) that she had written a rather elaborate, detailed letter to her young children on 11/22/63, describing the remarkably convoluted history of her alleged itinerary with Poppy on 11/22/63.

      But Baker highlighted a number of strange anomalies about the "legendary" letter.  For one thing, she and Poppy returned to Houston that evening.  Why write a detailed letter to her kids about the day?

     Additionally, the diction and Jane Austen-like formality of the letter to young Jeb, Neil, et.al. was rather odd, considering their age and the fact that she was their mother.  As Joseph McBride and I (and the forum) discussed a few years ago, George W. Bush would have been 17 at the time, and he was either at Andover, or on Thanksgiving break in Dallas with Poppy and Mommy-- not at home in Houston.

       I have long wondered if Dubya Bush ever made any public statements about where he was on 11/22/63.

       Some people have even wondered if young Dubya Bush was in Dealey Plaza.  (photo below)

@W. Niederhut  I happen to be intimately familiar with this episode because Russ contacted me after reading several of my posts on Jeff Morley's jfkfacts which included identification of the various business and personal connections between Joe Zeppa of Delta Drilling and Lone Star Steel and Ulmer/Bush. Russ assumed I was privy to his research when in fact I stumbled across Zeppa long before he published and "did my own" research.  A friendly exchange with Russ ensued which led to him staying in my home for an extended period during which time I organized his book signing at a local independent book store in Santa Fe.  We pulled in approx. 60 Santa Feans.

I agree Barbara's note is Jane-Austin-esque, and had I not been familiar with the significance of Zeppa and especially at the time Lone Star Steel whose board included one Prez or CEO from each of four of Dallas' largest banks and one in Wichita Falls — and Zeppa's position on small board of Petroleum Reserves (with a representative from ITEK who worked for Cerro mining whose chairman was ambassador to Belgium in the lead up to Lumumba's murder*) with offices at the International Building in Manhattan where Dulles occupied an office following his 'retirement' — I wouldn't have considered Barbara's note as possibly legitimate. It was only when Albarelli contacted me that I realized just how important this research might be .... how it "fit" into what he had uncovered.  Include the dense corporate/intel history with Al Ulmer's history in the agency including his post in Madrid while Otto Skorzeny set up shop, I consider it irresponsible to write off that note without solid evidence they weren't actually and deliberately in Tyler for an alibi, other than the reverse rationale being posited here?

Seems to me though that I recall seeing a photograph to argue they were in Dallas on the 21st??   Maybe @Ron Bulman remembers it?   

*Jack Crichton, pivotal to the Skorzeny-Meadows scheme along with Zeppa, was a leading member of The American Friends of Katanga Freedom Fighters. There is sufficient reason to consider Otto Skorzeny as QJ.WIN played a role in the Lumumba murder; Pierre Lafitte is known to have been in and out of the Congo during the period as well.

[Further HIGH STRANGENESS AND SYNCHRONICITY, some fifty years after the assassination, my spouse was in the Plaza with Oscar, our beloved Irish Wolfhound who caught the attention of a smartly dressed couple from East Texas.  They said they were going home to begin their search for a wolfie.  He mentioned I was from Texas as well and asked their names.  He (the guy) said he was the son of Joe Zeppa.  He passed away a couple of years later.]

17 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

This thread is about Nixon.  I didn't mean to de rail it but both he and Bush were there that day.

The misleading response you posted from him to Mrs. Hansen in 1979 is the disinfo.  I'd guess we don't have her letter asking him where he was on 11/22/63 but if she's asking in general, why?  Would she liked to have known if he was in Dallas that day?  Is that a logical assumption, given JFK was assassinated there that day?

This really is important Dave. 

He remembers being in Tyler to give a speech (while running for congress, a race he lost).  He remembers the horror of realizing it actually happened.  He remembers the similar reaction of others.  But when asked previously he couldn't remember where he was that day.  He, being a politician in Texas at the time running for office.  While virtually every U S  Citizen of school age and above did remember where they were when they first heard the news.

Yet in his response to Mrs. Hansen he chooses to omit the fact that he Woke Up in Dallas that morning then at some point went to Tyler for a speech and photo op in Tyler shortly after the assassination.  Nor does his selective memory note that after the speech/photo op he was flown back to Dallas on either Zeppa or Ulmer's plane to rendezvous with a flight out of Love Field home to Houston that afternoon. 

See Russ Baker's Family of Secrets for starters.  In particular, Barbara's letter to her friend.  

17 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

This thread is about Nixon.  I didn't mean to de rail it but both he and Bush were there that day.

The misleading response you posted from him to Mrs. Hansen in 1979 is the disinfo.  I'd guess we don't have her letter asking him where he was on 11/22/63 but if she's asking in general, why?  Would she liked to have known if he was in Dallas that day?  Is that a logical assumption, given JFK was assassinated there that day?

This really is important Dave. 

He remembers being in Tyler to give a speech (while running for congress, a race he lost).  He remembers the horror of realizing it actually happened.  He remembers the similar reaction of others.  But when asked previously he couldn't remember where he was that day.  He, being a politician in Texas at the time running for office.  While virtually every U S  Citizen of school age and above did remember where they were when they first heard the news.

Yet in his response to Mrs. Hansen he chooses to omit the fact that he Woke Up in Dallas that morning then at some point went to Tyler for a speech and photo op in Tyler shortly after the assassination.  Nor does his selective memory note that after the speech/photo op he was flown back to Dallas on either Zeppa or Ulmer's plane to rendezvous with a flight out of Love Field home to Houston that afternoon. 

See Russ Baker's Family of Secrets for starters.  In particular, Barbara's letter to her friend.  

Barbara's note mentions she was with Dan Ulmer's wife, does it not?  Are you saying Barbara later sowed disinformation that they were in Tyler that morning and that Joe Zeppa (Delta Drilling, core element of the Skorzeny - Meadows Madrid scheme since 1952) flew she and George into Dallas to catch a flight to Houston?   She even goes as far as describing a delay at Love Field while Air Force II took off. I'm genuinely interested in this apparent contradiction which continues to surface periodically.

Al Ulmer who planned to go into business with MC COS Win Scott and a group of retired intel agents including several from MI6 was also in Tyler that week with his brother and wife. 1-1/2 degree of separation from Mexico City is awfully close. 

Zeppa, along with Jack Crichton and Al Meadows and a number of Tyler area oilmen had revived their 1950s collaboration involving Otto Skorzeny in Madrid to launch a Houston-based petroleum scheme which garnered Skorzeny's enthusiasm (and participation under the radar?) in early 1963. Meadows and a delegation of independent oilmen from Texas had been in Madrid in October 1963 where he received a medal from Franco's energy czar. Is it unreasonable that all reunited with Otto Skorzeny on the occasion?
 

6 hours ago, Steve Roe said:

Ms. Haverstick's imagination has gotten the better of her.

I was amused how Morley went along with this nonsense, on his podcast, without doing basic research. Maybe he was just being polite and throwing out more conspiracy "red meat" to attract more paid subscribers to his Substack column with another "breaking conspiracy story". 

Geraldyn M. "Jerrie" Cobb, who was NASA's first woman astronaut candidate in the early 1960's, a pilot who learned to fly at age 12 (from her father) was from Oklahoma and at one time lived in Ponca City, previous to that she lived in Oklahoma City. She was the daughter of William H. Cobb, a former Air Force pilot who had a car dealership in Ponca City in 1960. "Jerrie" Cobb was 29 years old in 1960. 

Viola June Cobb, also from Ponca City was the daughter of Jasper E. Cobb. June Cobb who was older than "Jerrie", was 33 years old in 1960. 

They are clearly two different women. 

Viola June Cobb was of operational interest to the CIA in 1960. They (OS) investigated if there was a connection of identity of "Jerrie" and June Cobb. There was not. 

OFFICE OF SECURITY FILE ON COBB, VIOLA JUNE (maryferrell.org)

To think Viola June Cobb was using a popular woman astronaut name as a "CIA cover" is entirely baseless and ludicrous. They did have similarities, but that's it. 

Jeff may have left his audience thinking he was incredulous, but why didn't he actually query Haverstick further about Connally's wounds, or how BL might have navigated her shots around Jackie and the motorcycle guys, or why BL was photographed milling around in the crowd on the North side of Elm post-assassination if she was responsible for racing to Red Bird to fly someone - Oswald? - out of Dallas? 

In fairness, unless one has studied June Cobb's history — which obviously Jeff hasn't — one might be intrigued by the coincidences; however, if one knows that June wasn't a pilot, didn't have a twin sister, ergo neither she nor her twin were licensed pilots then one automatically questions the very foundation of Haverstick's hypothesis.  That's not to argue June Cobb's identity wasn't borrowed, but it is to insist that suggesting Hank Albarelli was dealing with someone other than June - maybe even Jerrie The Pilot Cobb - remains deeply perplexing. 

From there, if one has studied the QJ/WIN op, one recognizes how unreasonable is the notion that either June (or Jerrie?) was THE (all caps) QJ/WIN; from there, one also knows that the suggestion Otto Skorzeny was "unsuitable" for assassination operations is equally absurd and prompts a longterm question: why has Jeff avoided any conversation about the Skorzenys' role in the Dallas plot when he knows that Win Scott was posted on the Western European division desk in the early 1950s with reports of Skorzeny's activities crossing said desk? Isn't that history  as significant as the history of other agency officers he has pursued, i.e. JJA?

I noted that the question of QJ was left on the table at the end of the Haverstick interview; perhaps Jeff might consider a debate between Haverstick and those more familiar with what might be behind these diversions; or do we stand by and let some of the more bizarre assertions in AWIK take root and spend another decade separating more wheat from more chaff.  

 

endnote, Coup in Dallas . . . . The one publicly available photo [prior to 1969]  of Pierre Lafitte appeared in a 1955 syndicated newspaper article written by well-known journalist Bob Considine. The Considine article was circulated widely, and its prominence at the time may have exempted it from Helm’s directive. Instead, per the author’s recollection of having seen family photos of Lafitte taken around this time period, the photo appears to have been altered.

edited.

On 1/18/2024 at 9:30 AM, Michael Griffith said:

I just hope that a new book is written about the Lafitte datebook, one that is not laced with egregious tar-brush attacks on conservative political figures and their supporters. 

Any US historian rufusing to acknowledge the trajectory of shared ideologies — from the 1930s America First Committee to the 1960s John Birch Society to the Pat Buchanan revival of America First in the 1990s to the Tea Party at the turn of the century to Trump's MAGA in 2016 . . .  and full circle to the Trump/Miller/Bannon/Stone/Flynn America First movement in play — is intellectually   dishonest imv. 

From Coup in Dallas, based on the private records of Pierre Lafitte: 

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

                                                 “Levine will deal with Marina…”

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

 

This fellow Levine is in contact with Marina to break the story up in a little more graphic manner and tie it into a Russian business, and it is with the thought and background of a Russian connection, conspiracy concept. —John J. McCloy, Warren Commission Jan 21, 1964 

After much deliberation over the significance of Isaac Don Levine having closed out the assassination project manager’s 1963 datebook, Albarelli determined that, logically, Levine would also close out the investigation. Levine’s anti-communist dogma which would permeate his life’s work took shape prior to America’s entry into WWII, and thus serves as the symbolic bookend to the foundational chapters of this book. His writings, and in particular his networking—from the sensational Alger Hiss spy case, to the associations he developed during the reign of Senator Joseph McCarthy, and the services he provided the CIA—gave us a keener grasp of why Levine was selected by Warren Commission members Allen Dulles and John McCloy to influence the propaganda surrounding Lee Oswald as a “Commie Lone Nut.” It is the political history of Levine and that of a young Manhattan attorney named Roy Marcus Cohn—Joe McCarthy’s lead counsel who serves as our foothold on contemporary US politics—that captures the decades-long repercussions of the assassination of President Kennedy and the Coup in Dallas. . . . 

So How Does It All Come Together?

Roy Marcus Cohn, identified as one of the most powerful attorneys in Senator Joseph McCarthy’s stable during the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and the ensuing Army-McCarthy hearings—and Robert Morris of the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee who would later become a senior executive of the John Birch Society—each epitomized the philosophical argument that the only bulwark against the scourge of the earth, communism, was unregulated capitalism functioning in league with a fully sympathetic and compliant government apparatus, the generally accepted definition of fascism.

In the early 1950s, Cohn had caught the eye of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover who soon recommended the twenty-four-year-old attorney to his personal friend, Joe McCarthy, to fill the role of his chief counsel. For assistant counsel, McCarthy fulfilled another request, that of his good friend Joseph P. Kennedy who was looking for a spot for his young and restless son, Robert F. Kennedy. McCarthy designated RFK as assistant counsel to his committee, working alongside Hoover’s professional protégé, Roy Cohn. . . .

note: Roy Cohen's indictment was the purpose of a lunch meeting between AG Robert Kennedy and SDNY DA Morgenthau when Bobby received the call from Cohn's mentor FBI Dir. Hoover  that his brother had been gunned down in broad daylight in Dallas. To suggest the Trump presidency is removed from events in 1963 is either ignorant of history or deliberate obfuscation.

Jan 12, 2024

'This to Him Is the Grand Finale': Donald Trump's 50-Year Mission to Discredit the Justice System

The former president is in unparalleled legal peril, but he has mastered the ability to grind down the legal system to his advantage. It’s already changing our democracy.

(Michael Kruse, Senior staff writer POLITICO)
' . . . Starting in 1973 [only a decade following the assassination of Kennedy], when the federal government sued him and his father for racist rental practices in the apartments they owned, Trump learned from the notorious Roy Cohn, then searched for another Roy Cohn — then finally became his own Roy Cohn. He’s exploited as loopholes the legal system’s bedrock tenets, eyeing its very integrity as simultaneously its intrinsic vulnerability — the near sacrosanct honoring of the rights of the defendant, the deliberation that due process demands, the constant constitutional balancing act that relies on shared good faith as much as fixed, written rules. He has routinely turned what’s obviously peril into what’s effectively fuel, taking long rosters of losses and willing them into something like wins — if not in a court of law, then in that of public opinion. It has worked, and it continues to work. Trump, after all, was at one of his weakest points politically until the first of his four arraignments last spring. Ever since, his legal jeopardy and his political viability have done little but go up, together. Deny, delay and attack, always play the victim, never stop undermining the system: Trump has taken the Cohn playbook to reaches not even Cohn could have foreseen — fusing his legal efforts with his business interests, lawyers as important to him as loan officers, and now he’s done the same with politics. He’s not fighting the system, it seems sometimes, so much as he’s using it. He’s fundraising off of it. He’s consolidating support because of it. . . . '

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/12/donald-trump-indictments-legal-system-00135151?fbclid=IwAR0qKptBOw0-AYWuT-TkmQV_XUmEiKXXjiiSGzVdoJongVTy9G3hy9HqQF8

20 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

Well, ain't this thread precious, for multiple comments.  Here is the 1953 mug shot pf Pierre Leslie was having trouble re posting.  Another disguise, he was reputedly a master of.  With very short dark hair?   

I'm so glad you were able to re-post this. Do you think you could carry it over to your own active thread focused on Lafitte?

It prompted me to review a remark Hank included .... that the photo appears to have been altered.

endnote, CiD. . . . The one publicly available photo [prior to 1969]  of Pierre Lafitte appeared in a 1955 syndicated newspaper article written by well-known journalist Bob Considine. The Considine article was circulated widely, and its prominence at the time may have exempted it from Helm’s directive. Instead, per the author’s recollection of having seen family photos of Lafitte taken around this time period, the photo appears to have been altered.

Lafitte’s Arrest

According to FBI documents, during its six-year “search” for Pierre Lafitte, the notorious operative had used dozens of aliases, including Louis Romano, Frank Maceo, Paul Maceo, Jean Martin, Peter Martin, John Martin, Jack Martin, Paul Martino, Paul Mertz, Jean Mondolini, Louis Hidell, Paul Jehan, Jean Jehan, Louis Mancuso, Jacques Montaine, Peter Orsini, and Louis Tabet.

Lafitte had been arrested by a team of five FBI agents at his home in Gretna on December 8, 1969, charged with being a fugitive from justice, and then was transported to Boston, Massachusetts for arraignment before US District Court Judge Francis J.W. Ford for allegedly defaulting on bail posted seven years earlier. Lafitte had been indicted in 1962 in Boston on fifteen counts of mail fraud and transportation of stolen property after he allegedly swindled an investor, Ralph L. Loomis of Kittery Point, Maine, out of $350,000 through an alleged scheme aimed at financing mineral mining rights and diamond mines in Africa, as well as nickel mining rights, and fraudulent stock transfers involving Canadian Javelin Ltd., a conglomerate that will be considered in greater depth later in this book. Convenient in assisting Lafitte’s plea of innocence was that Loomis had died about one-year earlier.

When the FBI team arrested Lafitte at his New Orleans home, another team of agents visited and searched the relatively new and hugely popular Plimsoll Club where Lafitte had been hired as manager and executive chef under the alias of Jean M. Martin. Local newspapers on the Lafitte/Martin arrest stated, “Lafitte has developed a wide reputation for the food served at the Plimsoll Club in the International Trade Mart in downtown New Orleans. He has received [written] compliments from Mrs. Lyndon B. Johnson and numerous state and city officials for the French cuisine served at the club, and was made a Louisiana ‘colonel’ by Gov. John J. McKeithen.” It was not long after joining the Plimsoll that Martin was inducted into the Confrérie de la Chaîne des Rôtisseurs, the elite gastronomic society whose international roster boasted social and diplomatic luminaries including David K.E. Bruce, then Ambassador to the Court of Saint James. Other newspaper articles underscored that Lafitte/Martin’s cuisine had been a favorite of Clay LaVerne Shaw, the International Trade Mart’s founder and managing director who had by then had retired from his post as director of ITM. In March 1967, Shaw would be arrested and charged with conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy by New Orleans District Attorney James Garrison. — Coup in Dallas, by H. P. Albarelli Jr.

The stint in the Congo fueled speculation Pierre was WIROGUE found in early govt. documents. 

If you haven't, you might appreciate The Siege of Jadotville, an Irish film based on events in Katanga following the murder of Lumumba and just days prior to Dag Hammersjkold's plane crash. 

Irish UN troops were sent to Jadotville by Conor Cruise O'Brian who was instrumental in securing permanent Irish visas so that Otto and Ilse could buy property.... which just happened to be next door to Baldonnel military training camp. 

[revised for detail and clarity]

 

A Question of Identity

If anyone has listened to Jefferson Morley's interview of Mary Haverstick, author of AWIK which was posted recently on his substack, you're aware that Morley seems unfamiliar with significant details regarding June Cobb found in A Secret Order by H. P. Albarelli Jr. published in 2013 by Trine Day.

The following excerpts from ASO do in fact reaffirm some of the information Haverstick leads Morley to believe was exclusive to her own research.  This is entirely understandable if Haverstick and/or Morley failed to read ASO over the past decade, but it's important to restate again that any assertion Albarelli didn't know of whom he was writing about — June Cobb of NY (Haverstick's term, not his) —  is still patently absurd.

Albarelli's 38-page chapter devoted to June Cobb relies heavily on results of his FOIA requests and CIA documents as well as private letters, diary entries and interviews,   ' . . . Several top-secret CIA memoranda regarding concerns about Cobb's pending testimony culminated in a very telling March 19, 1962 memorandum that gave broad hints at what Cobb's activities were at the time.  The document, simply titled "June Sharp Cobb (201-278, 841)" (Cobb's 201 file designation) was written by Cobb's Agency handler Jean T. Pierson, identified in the document as an "intelligence researcher" for Task Force W.' . . . 


Dual Identities

Those familiar with his ensuing investigation which culminated in Coup in Dallas will know the significance of  Droller a.k.a. Bender (seen in the following paragraphs from ASO) because Bender appears on a significant date in 1963 in the datebook maintained by Pierre Lafitte.  Droller, Bender, Federico referenced in ASO is but one example of dual identities, an agency method Haverstick suggests is a phenomenon virtually unknown to researchers (an uninformed assertion imv); in fact the method was on Albarrelli's radar in the late 1990s while investigating the Frank Olson murder so he it's understandable he was insulted by Haverstick's suggestion made during a phone call some two years after ASO was published that he was unfamiliar with dual identities. It's apparent to those who read ASO carefully that he was conscious that some believed June was a pilot — a foundation of Haverstick's thesis. He very deliberately established that June distrusted mechanical things and that June Cobb was not a licensed pilot nor did she have a twin sister (as confirmed by John Newman) so a critical component of Haverstick's hypothesis is fundamentally flawed. 

Droller/Bender/Federico 

' . . . Pierson leads off by stating that she had been telephoned by Jerry [Gerry] Droller, Chief, WH/POA [Western Hemisphere/Political Affairs Office; Droller's aliases were Frank Bender and Don Federico] to inform her that June Cobb "was arriving in Washington to appear before the Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security at their request" . . . 

Pierson continued and stated that Droller explained that, as far as he knew, Cobb was being asked to testify on her connections with the Cuban Government and her knowledge of Juan Arevalo, former President of Guatemala and author of the book, The Shark & The Sardines, which Subject [Cobb] translated into English."

Note: Those interested in Droller/Bender might search EF for the deep dive Robert Montenegro made into Droller pursuant to Heinz Krug's assertion that Droller was one and the same as Friedrich Schend [sic] who Monté has established (with little doubt) was Friedrich Schwend. Albarelli had asked him if he could identify a "former" Nazi within the milieu in Cuba. Schwend fits the criteria.
 

Haverstick also draws attention to her discovery of a shared phone number. Albarelli wrote in 2013,

. . . Pierson went on and explained that she had discussed the matter in detail with Droller, and as a result had reactivated "a sterile phone number formerly used by Cobb," in the event she should attempt to contact Pierson." . . . 


And, as found in the following passage, Albarelli noted long before Haverstick — who suggests NO ONE realized it before she pointed it out in AWIK — that June Cobb's role with the agency while in MC was far more than administrative and culturally related. (he does however insist that June was never an "agent", contrary to Haverstick's own conclusions.)

' . . . Pierson concluded her memorandum by writing: "Lt. Col. Davies has been informed of the above, and of the background of the case by me, and will in return advise Mr. [William] Harvey, C/TFW, of the situation." Lt. Col. Albert C. Davies was a military officer assigned to Task Force W. as its chief of intelligence.  As some readers are aware, William K. Harvey was the director of Task Force W, and also the CIA's lead official of assassination matters, including its infamous QJ/WIN program.  

Lt. Col. Davies and Harvey, assisted by David Sanchez Morales at this same time were busy assembling aliases and backstopping documentation for June Cobb, as well as a number of other Task Force W employees, including Anthony Sforza, Frank J. Belito and Rene Dubois, all men deeply enmeshed in the CIA's more unsavory operations.  The fact that June Cobb was working closely with Sforza and others, well known for their skills in "wet affairs" or assassinations is significant in terms of her duties in Mexico City, which have consistently been downplayed by some writers, as well as former CIA officials, as mostly administrative and cultural liaison related tasks. 

There are numerous other examples of Albarelli having uncovered documents and never-before-revealed information gleaned from his interviews with those familiar with June Cobb and her history — as well as months and months of conversations with his friend June personally —  published in 2013, so it's difficult to understand why both Morley and Haverstick didn't hit pause and read the chapter in ASO titled Femme Fatale Enigma: Viola June Cobb before launching their discussion. 

Should Morley plan another segment with Haverstick, I think it would benefit the community for Mary in particular to be more fully informed about June in NY by studying A Secret Order. Doing so may result in adjustment of some of her more questionable assumptions including the suggestion Hank might have been interacting with someone other than June.  And, if either of them find discrepancies in Albarelli's early research related to MC and June Cobb, those too should be teased out. 

1 minute ago, Jonathan Cohen said:

What are you talking about, and on what basis would you assume I "take their claims" seriously? I don't believe a word Tosh Plumlee says about a south knoll shooter. And I don't believe anything in the datebook until it is authenticated and made widely available for study by the research community.

What is your general assessment of the research and conclusions presented in the podcast?

4 minutes ago, Jonathan Cohen said:

I don't explain anything, because that would require starting from the assumption that the datebook is real. As we know, it has not been independently verified as such or provided for examination by the wider research community. Until it has, there's literally zero point debating "what ifs" about its purported contents.

Have you challenged the list of shooters named by Dick Russell in Episode 10, two of whom appear on the list based solely on verbal testimony from decades ago?  Does that testimony trump a written document? Are Col. Bishop, Tosh Plumlee, Robert Blakely credible sources?

I simply don't understand why you would take their claims any more or less seriously than a written record maintained by Pierre Lafitte. Has anyone challenged the source of those interview tapes? Who conducted the interviews, who edited them? (For the record, we chose to omit Bishop and Plumlee as corroborating sources for reasons I suspect some in the forum will understand.) 

2 minutes ago, Jonathan Cohen said:

CompletelyUnverifiedDateBook.com.

Are you an equal opportunity skeptic? 

Are you also rejecting the research presented in the podcast "Who Killed JFK" that argues General Willoughby was intricate to the Dallas plot or that his Zed unit commander Col. Jack Canon was one of the shooters in Dealey?  

Indulge the hypothetical; no doubt you have in the past on this forum.

Hypothetically, how do you explain that Lafitte knew that a Willoughby squad was involved in Dealey, or that the strategist, Otto Skorzeny who Willoughby had known in a military capacity since the early 1950s, directed that the sniper positions should be turned?

I'll flesh out why the specific assertion that Willoughby was tactician to Harvey's strategist is likely invalid in a future comment.


 

[Nov 22]
Willoughby back-up

team squad - Tech

building - phone booth/bridge

O says turn them . . . 

Silverthorne - 

Ft. Worth 

airport

Mexico.

Lafitte datebook  Friday, November 15, 1963