Leslie Sharp

16 minutes ago, Chris Barnard said:

I would bet my bottom dollar that this is all retrievable from websites in France which record births deaths and marriages. Some even catalog gravestones now. 

One would think so, and I thought from the tenor of this thread someone is delving into these records.

6 minutes ago, Chris Barnard said:

He takes the name Souetre to this day. The information is from a genealogy site populated by a relative who bears the same surname. I would think this date is likely correct but, I am open to mistakes being made. Or the possibility of them rekindling their romance after a separation. Was the divorce a ‘show’ thing. Couldn’t have been easy for her if she wishes to live in France as the partner of an OAS wanted man. They are all things to consider. 

Definitely things to consider, Chris. 

The public version seems intended to distance Josette from Jean's OAS activity which suggests, at least to me, she was from a small town or a somewhat reputable family that didn't want the stigma.

Jean Rene was released from prison in spring 1963, otherwise how was he in Lisbon and in New Orleans.  So, she divorced him sometime prior?

Did she then welcome him home with open arms in Jan/Feb 1964 and Yannick was conceived? 

I assume her obituary hasn't been located, or Yannick's birth cert?

26 minutes ago, Chris Barnard said:

7th October 1964.

Josette is deceased. 

That suggests Yannick was conceived in early 1964, right? Isn't there something off about this timing? 

1 hour ago, Chris Barnard said:

He seems to be born after the split. He and his siblings and extended family are reachable in terms of the fact you can send them messages and there is an email address for Yannick. If anyone wants this, drop me a direct message.

David, any chance you have a precise birth date for Yannick?

1 hour ago, David Butler said:

It's 

Josette Suzanne MARCAILLOU D'AYMERIC although I have also seen it with one L so Josette Marcailou 

They had one son Yannick born in 1964 although I'm sure @Steve Thomas knows a lot more than me on the subject 🙂

Thanks very much, David.
Does this place her in Spain in 1963?
Has anyone interviewed Yannick?

On 2/8/2023 at 3:33 PM, Steve Thomas said:

David,

There is a whole write up on Jourdes in the web site you referenced earlier:

https://deltas-collines.org/galerie/JOURDES

And, yes, that picture is in there. Jourdes was in Sante.

Thanks for your help.

Steve Thomas

I wonder if those who seem to be at least familiar with the Souetre family have his former wife's name and might her family still be accessible? 

            About a month after escaping, Souetre emerged in Feb–March 1962 living in Spain, and from there he often traveled to Portugal. On several occasions at this time Souetre approached CIA officials and tried to persuade them to provide the OAS with backing as the best and most “viable alternative to communism” in France. As we have seen, there are at least two declassified CIA documents that purport to outline these meetings. Meanwhile, his new bride, provided false identity papers, had joined him in Madrid but because of his continued OAS activities, she soon left him, returning to France where she filed for a divorce. Due to her use of false documents in Spain, her divorce was interrupted by her falsification of papers. Having paid the fine for the offence, she was released, the divorce was finalized, and Josette Marcaihou disappeared from history. 

3 hours ago, Chris Barnard said:

Or had his widow had a knock at the door by some men in suits who insisted because of matters of national security that they needed to look through his papers and personal effects. 
 

I suspect he was long enough in the tooth and the huge implications of any such revealing records meant that he perhaps wouldn’t have kept any. If he did, they’d be in a safe place should he have been arrested and needed bargaining chips. 
 

Who knows?! 

 

Chris, If you haven't already, you can view clips from Otto's 1975 funeral on YouTube. 

Considering Ilse's history, it's possible she determined what would and wouldn't be put up for auction.  As of 2011, there was a Lot from the collection on auction  that seems to hold critical detail of their role in attempting to reconstitute The Reich from their base in Spain, in league with such characters as Hans-Ulrich Rudel, Werner Naumann, Leon Degrelle, et al.

So, I think the questions remain . . . were those US officials and fascist sympathizers that she and Otto had been in league with in 1963 concerned the couple had maintained incriminating records, or were they confident the avowed N A T Z I couple would know the appropriate time to begin releasing their story?

And can we venture to speculate as to Ilse and Otto's personal perspectives of their roles in the assassination of Kennedy? Did they consider themselves heroes in the fight against the spread of communism? Or were they diehard, proactive N A T Z I S to the end?
 

48 minutes ago, Chris Barnard said:

The documentary mentioned lots of receipts and notes that haven't been understood. I wonder if some forensic accounting would yield some secrets?

I hope Ralph Ganis has continued to pursue those and other areas of research related to the collection.  It's my understanding that the portion of the collection he purchased revealed very little of the Skorzenys' activities in 1963.  I've never completely understood whether that was a result of certain papers being withheld? might they have been segregated for sale to the highest bidder? or did Otto and Ilse simply not generate records or engage in written correspondence during that year . . . for some reason? 

17 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

Wow Leslie, this post is full of nuggets for me.  Things I didn't know.  

Like, U S Special Forces attended Skorzeny's training camps outside Madrid.  And . . .

Skorzeny's camp bitterly opposed Senator Kennedy's 1957 advocating for Algeria's independence.  I.E., they had a six year grudge against him by 1963.

The John Birch Society, the Dallas chapter in particular, supported multiple efforts financially by his "camp".

This one takes the cake though.

Along with Skorzeny, following the end of the war, Leroy served as a lead instructor with Skorzeny’s efforts to train Egyptian leader Abd al-Nasir’s intelligence and security services, after recruiting a hundred German advisers from National Socialist soldiers serving during WWII, the SS underground, and from among technical experts with military industries. The purpose was to train Arab guerrillas in commando tactics and in protecting the former National Socialist technicians working for Nasir from Israeli “hit” teams. The job was carried out at the CIA’s bequest.”    

Just a few years later that same CIA's own JJ Angleton would be giving away enriched plutonium to those Israeli's.

My, what a topsy turvy world in which we live.  I'm going to have to read the book!

Thanks, Ron, and Major Ganis's "The Skorzeny Papers" is definitely worth the time as well. He's drawing directly from the collection of Otto's private papers he purchased at auction.  

13 minutes ago, Steve Thomas said:

Leslie,

Mertz, from your composite:

 

Souetre composite

#1 On the base of Culumb-Bechar, 1957

Lieutenant Tromoni (on left) Souetre (on right)

#2 Sergeant Lemineur (on left) and Souetre (on right) Algeria circa 1960

http://www.commando-air.com/page10.php?view=preview&category=1&q&image=168&ImageGalleryPage=4

#3 Soetre in Sante Prison (I think. I have not been avle to verify. The other person is unknown)

 

Steve Thomas

I think we agree that Souetre and Mertz were distinct individuals in spite of periodically co-opting one another's identify. The question is why DST got it wrong. It's possible I've overlooked clues that might establish it was an official French government publication or a newspaper or magazine. MM initially insisted the photos with caption originated from DST files.

12 hours ago, Steve Thomas said:

Leslie,

Thank you.

Yes, you provided this composite on page 8 in the Thread, "Coup in Dallas" here:

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/27407-coup-in-dallas/page/8/

In your post, you included a pdf file, that if a person clicks on it, can be downloaded.

I did, and yes, there is no resemlance.

You won't need to upload it again, at least for my benefit anyway.

I would disagree with the author of the piece that the French authorities knew that JFK would be assassinated that day.

 By 1963, Mertz had been expelled from France and was living in Montreal running drugs, probably as part of Lucien Rivard's network.

Steve Thomas

 

 

Thanks, Steve,

I've yet to confirm this page was taken from an official government publication. Mr. Messina — who sent it to me via FB messenger — assured me this information stemmed from DST files, but unfortunately he disappeared off my radar a few days later. The caption which indicates the DST has promoted photos of Souetre as Mertz perpetuates the confusion. As you know, in the spring of 1964, French authorities sent a photo of Souetre to the CIA that compares with images we have of Souetre from private collections, so "they" were not confused in the early months following the assassination of the US president.

1 hour ago, Chris Barnard said:

I think some of us have appetite/energy. Does Michel Mertz pass through Canada? Ever live in Canada? Would the Canadian authorities keep records / archives? 
 

Do the French authorities have photos of both Mertz & Souetre? 
 

I have looked at your montage of Images, they are two people who look nothing alike. I just scoured google and saw additional images. 
 

Was the deputy head of the SDECE coincidentally in a meeting with James Jesus Angleton when JFK is shot? 

de Lanurrian?

Chris, have you studied photos of Mertz vs. Souetre? Do you think they resemble one another?

30 minutes ago, Chris Barnard said:

That’s the way it feels to me. I think the only reason we are saying this is because a shoddy job of misdirection has been done. 

I'm pretty sure we all agree a "shoddy job of misdirection has been done".  Who among us are prepared to get back on track?

2 minutes ago, Chris Barnard said:

Is there a way you can email me it or whatsapp and i’ll find a way to post it? Alternatively you could probably use a photo sharing site or social media page and upload, sharing the link.

Thanks 

Chris, I posted the composite of the photos several months ago on the primary EF thread "Coup in Dallas".  Let me know if you can't find it.


 

Just now, Chris Barnard said:

Hi Leslie,

Are you able to post URL’s to the threads / images?

Thanks

I constructed the composite so it's stored on my desktop.

2 minutes ago, Steve Thomas said:

Leslie,

I would be interested, if you're willing.

Steve Thomas

Steve, I've shared the composite on Ed Forum in the past so of course I'm willing.  

However, the file exceeds the limits of EF, so I'm trying to remember how to drag the composite (or "choose file") into this thread so that you can consider the images. 

For now, the caption of photos of Jean Rene Souetre reads, 

This poor quality photograph is a unique piece.

It is the agent of the DST Michel Mertz, from two different angles, infiltrator of the OAS environment protect de Gaulle.  

He was in Dallas November 22 where he pretended to be Souetre.

His presence in Texas is proof that the French services knew that Kennedy was going to be assassinated that day.

On 2/3/2023 at 4:26 PM, Douglas Caddy said:

Lee Shepherd posted this on Facebook today. He added to his posting that this came out of the Bobby Baker scandal.

 

Within months of taking office, President Kennedy appointed his friend Grant Stockdale ambassador to Ireland. Two years later, Stockdale, an administrative assistant to Senator George Smathers, became a major stock holder of Serv-U Corporation that had expanded into some major land holdings in Florida. Through these contacts, Stockdale was pulled into the inner circle of individuals surrounding JFK’s assassination. On November 26, 1963, Stockdale suddenly flew to Washington DC and talked secretly with Robert and Edward Kennedy. It is not known what he conveyed to them, but upon his return he told several of his friends, "The world is closing in." On December 1, Stockdale spoke to his attorney, William S. Frates: “He started talking. It didn't make much sense.” Frates recalled, “He said something about 'those guys' trying to get him. Then about the [Kennedy] assassination...he knew and was closely associated with almost all of the top figures in the cabal.” The next day the forty-eight-year-old Stockdale either “fell to his death,” or was shoved from the fourteenth floor (technically the 13th) of the DuPont building in downtown Miami. He did not leave a suicide note

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All reactions:

5Keven Hofeling, Kelly Houckham and 3 others

 

As no doubt Lee Shepherd is aware — having indicated to me in a private message request for photos of Pierre Lafitte —  we address Stockade in Coup in Dallas . . . 

In February 1961, newly elected President John Kennedy had nominated Stockdale to be the US Ambassador to Ireland. On March 28, 1961, the US Senate confirmed the nomination. Stockdale and his family enjoyed their time at the ambassador’s residence, Phoenix Park in Dublin, Ireland where as ambassador, he often hosted formal gatherings and events for dignitaries. 

Among the Stockdales’ guests, in the spirit of céad míle fáilte (a hundred thousand welcomes) were Otto and Ilse Skorzeny. The Skorzenys had purchased a 155-acre estate named Martinstown House, in Curragh, County Kildare in June 1959. Stockdale was acutely familiar with the former National Socialist SS officer who often visited with various American businessmen in meetings held in the American Embassy in Ballsbridge, Co. Dublin, including military officers and intelligence officials, as well as various embassy staff members throughout 1960, 1961, and 1962. Former embassy personnel vividly recall Skorzeny coming to the embassy on a near “weekly basis.” Evidence also reveals that the Skorzenys were occasional dinner guests joining the ambassador and his wife, and that Ilse Skorzeny was a frequent visitor to Miami, Florida. As we learn in a later chapter in pursuit of the Skorzenys’ time in Ireland, the SS officer had been an active participant in aiding arms trafficking to the Irish Republican Army (IRA). 

When the Serve-U Corporation scandal involving Democratic operative Bobby Baker finally exploded, under pressure from his close friend President Kennedy, Grant Stockdale reluctantly resigned his post in Ireland in July 1962.

Stockdale’s Friends, Phil Graham and Frank Wisner

Just three weeks before the first clear reference to Ellen Rometsch in his diary, Lafitte writes on May 26:

L.O. – Wisner

Vosjoli   DC   JA

Then on June 16, Lafitte first acknowledges Ella by name in an entry that reads, “Ella acting classes – who?”  

Four days later, on June 20, Lafitte makes a note to cable OS (Otto Skorzeny), preceded by the name Wisner. The note reads in full:

Wisner - cable / OS

NYC / Wash D C

On July 28, 1963, the project manager of the assassination of President Kennedy makes a note that George [Hunter-White] and/or Otto Skorzeny would talk to [Grant] Stockdale about P. [Phil] Graham and the prospects that Graham would end up at Chestnut Lodge, in a duplicate fashion of Frank Olson’s journey toward death some ten years earlier.

George / OS talk

to Stockdale about P. Graham

(George says Chestnut Lodge) - dupe –

On 2/3/2023 at 6:10 PM, Benjamin Cole said:

Please add some context. Which individuals did Stockdale become close to, through Serv-U?

On July 28, 1963, the project manager of the assassination of President Kennedy makes a note that George [Hunter-White] and/or Otto Skorzeny would talk to [Grant] Stockdale about P. [Phil] Graham and the prospects that Graham would end up at Chestnut Lodge, in a duplicate fashion of Frank Olson’s journey toward death some ten years earlier.

George / OS talk

to Stockdale about P. Graham

(George says Chestnut Lodge) - dupe –

Operation Mockingbird

Philip Graham, a wartime graduate of the US Army’s Intelligence School at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, served as an intel officer in the US Airforce in the Pacific theater during the war. In 1940, he married Katherine Meyer, the daughter of Eugene Meyer who owned The Washington Post. After the war, and following graduation from Harvard Law School, Graham replaced his father-in-law as publisher at WaPo and eventually became co-owner of the newspaper, serving as president and chief executive officer as well as chairman of the board of directors of Newsweek magazine. 

On 2/4/2023 at 12:05 PM, Douglas Caddy said:

This was all that Lee Shepherd posted. He was asked by a Facebook member to expand on it, and he replied that it was a long story. I shall write him and ask him to tell the rest.

Doug, I believe Lee Shepherd has read Coup in Dallas and is aware that Grant Stockade appears in the records of Pierre Lafitte whose papers were critical to Albarelli's investigation into not only the Frank Olson murder but his subsequent pursuit of the assassination of John Kennedy.

On July 28, 1963, the project manager of the assassination of President Kennedy makes a note that George [Hunter-White] and/or Otto Skorzeny would talk to [Grant] Stockdale about P. [Phil] Graham and the prospects that Graham would end up at Chestnut Lodge, in a duplicate fashion of Frank Olson’s journey toward death some ten years earlier.

George / OS talk

to Stockdale about P. Graham

(George says Chestnut Lodge) - dupe –

Operation Mockingbird

Philip Graham, a wartime graduate of the US Army’s Intelligence School at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, served as an intel officer in the US Airforce in the Pacific theater during the war. In 1940, he married Katherine Meyer, the daughter of Eugene Meyer who owned The Washington Post. After the war, and following graduation from Harvard Law School, Graham replaced his father-in-law as publisher at WaPo and eventually became co-owner of the newspaper, serving as president and chief executive officer as well as chairman of the board of directors of Newsweek magazine. . . .

' . . . On the morning of December 2, 1963, ten days after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Edward Grant Stockdale, a ruggedly handsome, forty-eight-year-old businessman and cohort of both Jack and Robert Kennedy, fell to his death from thethirteenth floor of the Alfred I. duPont Building in downtown Miami. 

            Stockdale tumbled eight floors from his business office window before his body struck and landed on a fifth-floor ledge. He was wearing a white dress shirt and gray suit pants. Miami police investigators determined Stockdale’s death to be an “apparent suicide.” Stockdale left no suicide note or letter, according to investigators, and despite their determination, it remains unclear as to how Stockdale went out the window of his office. It is uncertain whether the window Stockdale went out of was open or closed. Scant newspaper reports seem to indicate it was open. Requests from these authors, and others, for a copy of the police investigative file brought the response that the file was no longer available. One official, who declined to be named for this book, said he thought the file “had been either lost or misplaced years ago.”

The facts preceding his so-called “suicide” only serve to compound the difficulty of believing the investigator’s conclusion. Stockdale, as usual, arrived at his office at about 10:00 a.m. on the morning of Monday, December 2, 1963. His office was on the thirteenth floor of the office building in downtown Miami. Stockdale was unable to get into his office because it was locked, and he didn’t have a key with him. His administrative assistant, who usually opened the office each day, was at a dental appointment. She would arrive at about 10:30 a.m., ten minutes after Stockdale’s death.

Finding his office door locked, Stockdale had gone across the hall to a law office and asked Mary Ruth Hauser if anyone had a key to his office. Hauser told Stockdale that she would call the building’s manager to come with a key. Stockdale waited while Hauser made the call. 

She recounted the next day: “He followed me into my office and stood there while I called down for a key. He stood there very calmly. He didn’t seem at all agitated. . . . Somehow the subject of the President’s death came up. . . . He told me he was in his office when his wife called to tell him the President had been shot. He said he just got down on his knees and prayed.”

After this, a person with a key arrived and Stockdale and Hauser went across the hall, still talking. As Stockdale entered his now opened office, Hauser’s desk phone started ringing and she excused herself to answer it. 

Hauser told police that about “five minutes later” there “was this terrible thud.” It was the sound of Stockdale’s body striking the roof ledge of the top floor of the Florida National Bank and Trust, about seventy-five feet below his office.

Hauser said: “I just wondered if I had gone right behind him. . . . I don’t know, I guess it wouldn’t have made any difference. The whole world has just gone mad.”

Only minutes after Stockdale struck the fifth-story ledge, Dr. Sheffel H. Wright, who had an office in the duPont Building, rushed to the scene and pronounced Stockdale dead. A priest from a nearby Catholic church also arrived and administered the Last Rites. Newspaper accounts of Stockdale’s death featured interviews with a number of people who had seen Stockdale before he arrived at his office that fateful morning. All said he seemed to be in “good spirits.” Indeed, Stockdale even got a shoeshine just before coming to his office.

An article in the Miami Herald Reporter, however, by political reporter John B. McDermott revealed that Stockdale had attempted to talk to McDermott on Sunday, December 1. McDermott stated that Stockdale “wanted to tell me something—to talk things over.” Unfortunately, McDermott didn’t talk to Stockdale and seemed to have no clue as to what he had to say. McDermott’s article also stated that on Saturday, November 23, the day after the JFK assassination, Stockdale flew to Washington, D.C. after he received a telephone call from Attorney General Bobby Kennedy. McDermott apparently had no idea why Kennedy had summoned Stockdale. Stockdale returned from Washington late the same day, and then returned to Washington on November 26. On that day he met with Bobby Kennedy and Edward Kennedy and then flew back to Miami the same day. The next day, Edward Kennedy called Stockdale’s wife and told her he was concerned about her husband’s “mental health.” Again, McDermott provides no information about why Stockdale met with the Kennedys. 

Interviewed in June 2004, Grant’s daughter, Ann Stockdale—apparently acutely aware of the dangers of speaking candidly about her father’s alleged suicide even four decades later—made no reference to revelations that rocked D.C. politics in the fall of 1963, including the Bobby Baker scandal that had forced her family to leave Dublin, and the Ellen Rometsch Affair. Perhaps for Grant’s daughter, the safer explanation was the Military-Industrial Complex: 

[President] Kennedy asked Daddy to go to the Air Force Base south of Miami to see if (against Kennedy’s orders) bombs were being loaded on the planes. Bombs were being loaded on the planes! I believe one of the reasons Daddy was killed was because he knew that the Government was being run by the Military Complex. The Military Complex didn’t want the American people to realize (and still don’t) that they were calling the shots. Daddy knew he was being followed . . . and he told Mom that they were going to get him . . . and they did. There was an attempt on my life also several days after Daddy’s funeral. I realize now that this was a scare tactic to silence my Mother, i.e., if you speak about anything, your kids are dead. It worked! 

Author and publisher David Talbot writes that Stockdale “flew to Washington and talked with Robert and Edward Kennedy about the assassination of their brother. On his return [to Miami] Stockdale told several of his friends that ‘the world was closing in.’ On December 1, he spoke to his attorney, William Frates, who later recalled: ‘He started talking. It didn’t make much sense. He said something about “those guys” trying to get him. Then about the assassination.’”

As intriguing as Ann Stockdale’s and David Talbot’s revelations are, few were aware at the time of Stockdale’s acquaintanceship with Otto and Ilse Skorzeny in Ireland, and the possible impact that may have had on his untimely death. 

Wolves on the Prowl

Stockdale was a well-known and respected businessman in Miami, as well as in St. Petersburg, Florida, where he and his brother Julian owned and operated a real estate investment and sales firm, Grant Stockdale and Associates. Stockdale, a former US Marine during World War II, serving in the Pacific, was also a very close friend of John F. Kennedy, having become so in 1949 when Kennedy was a young Congressman from Massachusetts. Stockdale’s friendship with JFK frequently involved visits by Kennedy to Stockdale’s Coral Gables home that he shared with his wife and five children. Kennedy, Stockdale, and Stockdale’s children often played touch football on Stockdale’s expansive lawn, and then afterwards everyone would swim in the warm Florida ocean waters.

As a Democrat, Stockdale was also a close friend to George Armistead Smathers, who, with Stockdale’s strong support, was elected to represent Florida in Congress in 1946. Stockdale served briefly as Smathers’ congressional aide, and then served in the Florida Legislature from 1948 to 1950. In 1951, Smathers won one of Florida’s US Senate seats. Stockdale joined Senator Smathers in 1960 in efforts to nominate JFK for the presidency. As a member of the National Democratic Party Finance Committee, Stockdale campaigned hard and widely for Kennedy’s election. Both Stockdale and Smathers were close to Philip Graham, publisher of The Washington Post, who also worked diligently for JFK’s and LBJ’s election, and who Smathers had known since early childhood in Florida. 

Apparently, George Smathers shared JFK’s exuberant fondness for members of the opposite sex. CBS reporter and journalist Roger Mudd recalls Smathers spending time on the presidential yacht in the early 1960s. “Smathers was probably John Kennedy’s best friend in the US Senate,” said Mudd. “Together or singly, they were wolves on the prowl, always able to find or attract gorgeous prey. . . . It was a joke, our pretending to be covering the president, bobbing around in the ocean, squinting through binoculars to find out who was coming and going but always having our view blocked by a Secret Service boat just as another long-legged Palm Beach beauty climbed aboard.” 

Despite their close friendship, Smathers often acted as a right-wing Democrat, frequently disagreeing with Kennedy on policy and legislation, including his opposition to early civil rights efforts and JFK’s backing of Medicaid. A virulent anti-communist, he proposed an embargo against Cuban tobacco and legislative bar against travel and trade with Castro’s Cuba. The senator had the president’s ear to a degree. Of note, Smathers also served as a covert CIA channel for a number of CIA assets in Florida, including wealthy Miami businessman William Pawley who was close to Allen Dulles and financed a number of covert paramilitary actions against Castro. 

In 1975, former Sen. Smathers testified before the congressionally created Church Committee investigating the CIA’s covert and assassinations programs. Smathers told the committee:

[President Kennedy] asked me what reaction I thought there would be throughout South America were Castro to be assassinated * * * I told the President that even as much as I disliked Fidel Castro that I did not think it would be a good idea for there to be even consideration of assassination of Fidel Castro, and the President of the United States completely agreed with me, that it would be a very unwise thing to do, the reason obviously being that no matter who did it and no matter how it was done and no matter what, the United States would receive full credit for it, and it would work to his great disadvantage with all of the other countries in Central and South America * * * I disapproved of it, and he completely disapproved of

the idea. [asterisks in original document]

2 hours ago, Chris Barnard said:

I am certain that they don’t want their father to be in the news as the man who was involved in Dallas. I think they’ll ignore or deny. However, you never know, there may be a surprise (I hope). Nothing ventured, nothing gained. 

Christian, I wonder if you've come across a researcher writing under the alias "Mateo Messina" who in the past has been active on Facebook using that name? Apparently he is now posting under the name "Richard Helms" on social media.

I engaged with Mateo for several months following publication of Coup in Dallas. He claimed to have been in communication with a number of published investigative journalists over the years including Larry Hancock. 

During our communication, Mateo insisted that he knows members of the extended Souetre family, as well as members of the Michel Mertz family, all of whom attest that neither Jeanne Rene nor Michel were in Dallas in November 1963. Eventually, he threatened that representatives those families could arrive on my doorstep one day to sue me for my contribution to Albarelli's investigation that culminated in our book, Coup in Dallas. 

I wrote off his threats to nothing other than incoherent bluster, but I was intrigued by his last message that included photos from a French publication that attributes the source of those images to the DST ... and the caption of the photos misidentifies Souetre as Michel Mertz.  I've shared the composite photos on other Ed Forum threads. Let me know if you're interested in seeing them. 

L. 

  

On 2/6/2023 at 8:26 AM, Steve Thomas said:

Chuck,

Sorry. I mis-spoke - it was Lisbon.

Steve Thomas

Yves Guillou a.k.a Ralf Guerin-Serac and Aginter Press . . . from Hank Albarelli's Coup in Dallas,

The OAS and the Aginter Press

Before being air dropped into Vietnam again in 1954, Lucien Conien spends a few weeks at Otto Skorzeny’s training camp outside of Madrid. It is the same camp where multiple French ultraright guerre révolutionnaire tacticians who would meld into the OAS are going through intensive warfare training before being dispatched to Vietnam. By 1957, they had become bitterly opposed to Senator John Kennedy from Massachusetts when he advocated for Algerian independence. The training is rigorous, even brutal at times. Skorzeny’s chief trainers at the camp, Jean Rene Souetre, mentioned in the mysterious correspondence of Frenchman Paul Gluc, and fellow Frenchman Yves Guiliou who widely used the alias Ralf Guerin-Serac, are relentless in their objective to shape their trainees into thoroughly trained professional soldiers. Conien meets every several days with the former SS officer for drinks, dinner, and an occasional choice cigar. 

            Not surprisingly, and especially germane to one of this investigation’s central characters, is that Lucian Conien knew Otto Skorzeny quite well. His initial links to Skorzeny can be found in the La Cagoule, the French Resistance, and the long-standing, mysterious and Portugal-based Aginter Press. Ostensibly a press or media agency, Aginter Press fronted for what CIA officials privately called “assassination central.” Often wrongly cited as being founded in 1966, Aginter Press was first organized in 1962 by Skorzeny’s prized trainer, Guérin-Serac, as a “counterinsurgency, counter-guerrilla center with support of the CIA, of the paramilitary Portuguese Legion, and especially of PIDE, the feared Portuguese secret police, which supposedly financed Aginter Press at the tune of two million escudos per month. Aginter Press was a sizable operation. Between 1962 and 1965, it organized and established an important network of informers linked, through PIDE, to the CIA and to the security services of such countries as West Germany, Spain, Greece, and South Africa,” as well as numerous Latin American and several other European countries. . . .

    . . .  Significantly, as readers shall learn in detail later—regardless of the fact that today the CIA maintains that it knows nothing about Guillou and that he does not appear in their voluminous files—we know that, only about six months before the JFK assassination, on May 23, 1963, Guillou, under the alias Guerin-Serac, accompanied by OAS member and trained assassin Captain Jean Rene Souetre, met with CIA representatives in Lisbon, Portugal. A brief glimpse at Captain Souetre before we encounter him in full in Chapter 10 tells us that a detailed once-secret memorandum by CIA Deputy Director of Plans Richard Helms, identified the purpose of the Lisbon meeting, as described in at least two declassified CIA documents, was to enlist the CIA in OAS efforts to assassinate French leader Charles de Gaulle. . . . '

 ' . . . Souetre’s companion at the meeting in Lisbon was his compatriot, Guerin-Serac who before he established Aginter Press, had been a French soldier serving in France, before fighting in the Korean Conflict in the early 1950s, and “possibly served as a liaison man between the CIA and the French services.” Guillou/Guerin-Serac had also been a master parachutist in Algeria, “before he deserted the French army and joined the OAS rebellion. (This at the very same time as Jean Rene Souetre.) After Algerian independence and the OAS’s defeat, he emigrated to Spain and then to Portugal, the last colonial empire that appeared willing to fight for Western values over ‘communist imperialism.’”  

            Historians Michael Bale and Franco Ferraresi have emphasized Guerin-Serac’s instructive writings for novice terrorists, which, although written over fifty years ago, appear tailor-made for today’s senior terrorists. Some apt excerpts from Guerin-Serac’s manual Missions Spéciales are:

—Subversion acts with appropriate means upon the minds and wills in order to induce them to act outside all logic, against all rules, against all laws. In this way, it conditions individuals and enables one to make use of them as one wishes.

—Action psychologique [is] a nonviolent weapon [used] to condition public opinion through the use of the press, the radio, conferences, demonstrations, etc. . . . with the goal of uniting the masses against the authorities.

—Terrorism breaks the population’s resistance, obtains its submission, and provokes a rupture between the population and the authorities. . . . There is a seizure of power over the masses through the creation of a climate of anxiety, insecurity, and danger.

—Selective terrorism . . . destroys the political and administrative apparatus by eliminating the cadres of those organs.

—Indiscriminate terrorism . . . destroys the confidence of the people by disorganizing the masses so as to manipulate them more effectively. . . .

. . . As mentioned, the two years before forming Aginter, Guerin-Serac both trained and served as a trainer in the arts of sabotage, explosives, and assassination at Otto Skorzeny’s secret training camps outside of Madrid. Indeed, Guerin-Serac, along with Jean Rene Souetre, were considered Skorzeny’s most competent trainers, and they were often called upon to work with US Special Forces who attended the camps. About this same time, claim several European historians, “US Army special forces began a program of targeting Western/NATO installations in Belgium, while disguising themselves as terrorists.”  

In early 1962, when Guerin-Serac first moved to establish Aginter Press, he acted in concert with Robert Leroy, a French SS officer during the war and WWII National Socialist SS officer Otto Skorzeny, both of whom served as the strategic leadership for Aginter. Leroy was a prewar member of Charles Maurras’ Action Française, a Far-Right political group, and then as an active member of La Cagoule’s terrorist underground. He took part in the Requête Carlist militia forces during the Spanish Civil War and then served as a Vichy intelligence operative. He was also a member of the Waffen SS Charlemagne division and was a key member of Otto Skorzeny’s commando forces, where he served as an instructor. Along with Skorzeny, following the end of the war, Leroy served as a lead instructor with Skorzeny’s efforts to train Egyptian leader Abd al-Nasir’s intelligence and security services, after recruiting a hundred German advisers from National Socialist soldiers serving during WWII, the SS underground, and from among technical experts with military industries. The purpose was to train Arab guerrillas in commando tactics and in protecting the former National Socialist technicians working for Nasir from Israeli “hit” teams. The job was carried out at the CIA’s bequest.”    

            Professor Tunander writes revealingly of Aginter: 

[The] international fascist intelligence network, Aginter Press, was established to implement the Strategy of Tension, with support from the Portuguese security service PIDE and the CIA. This network included a unit specializing in the infiltration of anarchist and pro-Chinese groups, and its “correspondents” would use such organizations as a cover for carrying out bombings and other violent attacks. Aginter Press also included a strategic centre for subversion and intoxication [drugging and poisonings] operations, along with an executive action organization that carried out assassinations (most likely the same “pool of assassins” that William Harvey, CIA station Chief in Italy, had recruited in Europe for the CIA’s “Executive Action Capability”). All of these divisions of Aginter Press were under the leadership of French OAS officer and former US liaison officer Captain Yves Guillou (alias Yves Guerin Serac), in collaboration with Robert Leroy, a former French SS officer, and Otto Skorzeny, a senior German SS officer. [Italics added]         

A portentous January 1968 affidavit sworn by Aginter Press assassin and Jean Rene Souetre associate Jacques Godard reveals the group’s relationship with certain American persons and organizations: “In the course of our services we had relations with certain persons and organizations like, for example, President Tschombe and with Biafra. We likewise were in charge of relations with the John Birch Society, which was an American political group financed especially by Texas oil producers whose activity is absolutely anti-communist. Everywhere where there is a struggle, either open or covert, with communists, the John Birch Society [JBS] lends its financial aid to the people who are struggling against international communism.”   The reader encounters the significance of the Texas oil producers and the Dallas branch of the JBS the chapter titled, “Lay of the Land,” to further understand the width and breadth of influence of Aginter Press and similar fascist organizations.

***

Readers will soon learn about two other far-reaching organizations quite similar to Aginter Press. These are the post-war World Commerce Corporation and the National Socialist-created Spain-based SOFINDUS group, both ubiquitous commercial organizations that served as multi-faceted intelligence operations and assassination bureaus. . . . '

On 1/29/2023 at 4:54 AM, Greg Doudna said:

Just brainstorming here. Could this be Jack Tatum, earlier version of his story? The author of the letter (a) says he was a witness; (b) has a wife; (c) says he is not coming forward with what he saw; (d) gives the same two reasons for not coming forward Jack Tatum later gave in explanation (thought there were enough other witnesses; fear for life). Those points agree with Tatum.

Tatum did not come forward later but was found, via HSCA door-to-door checking in Oak Cliff for leads as I recall, i.e. not Tatum's idea to be outed as a witness. When he was outed and found, he now says he saw Oswald. One possibility is that could be a strategic alteration of his story intentionally, if he believed the real killing was mob- or underworld-related, and that they might still be at large if he told a non-Oswald story.

There is no doubt to me that what Acquilla Clemons saw, and what Doris Holan from her second-story window on Patton saw, was the known shouting/waving-arms interaction between the killer and Ted Callaway on Patton, running in opposite directions on Patton. Neither of those two women claimed that both of the men they saw were gunmen; both claimed they saw one gunman waving or interacting with another man across the street going the opposite direction, one of the two men of that interaction testifying to the Warren Commission directly of that interaction which Clemons and Holan saw (Callaway). 

That would not agree with the author of the letter if his claim is real that he witnessed the shooting and claimed to see two involved in the shooting (if the letter is not bogus). This is just shot-in-the-dark speculation, but imagine Tatum is the author of the Playboy letter, was a witness, and the letter represents an original version of what Tatum saw or thought he saw, prior to when HSCA found him and he was then up and down with the Oswald smirk and etc., if he changed or developed the story to that.

Is there a possible reconstruction from Tatum's HSCA and post-HSCA version, and the known facts of the Tippit crime scene, to interpret the Playboy letter claim if Tatum wrote it? Imagine Tatum driving his red car, the one Benavides sees in front of him. Tatum goes west, passes the Tippit cruiser, sees the man standing by the right front fender of the cruiser, Tippit getting out of the car. Tatum hears shots as he goes through Patton and Tenth, looks into his rear view mirror and sees not much distinct but does not turn around bodily to look yet because is focused on clearing the intersection. Tatum pulls his car over to the right and stops, and only then turns around bodily to look and see clearly. There he sees (so he said) the killer running around the back of the cruiser and firing a coup de grace shot into Tippit on the pavement. However Tatum has got the shot numbers garbled and there were three final shots in quick succession into Tippit on the ground, not just one final coup de grace. The shot sequence is as Callaway heard, bam...bam...bam-bam-bam, two with a delay and then three final quick. Therefore: shot #1 over the hood, a hit into Tippit's side. As Tippit stumbles and topples from that hit shot #2 misses for that reason. With Tippit down and out of a line of fire over the hood the gunman cannot shoot further from that position and runs around the car (around the rear is what Tatum said he saw), fires the final three in rapid succession into Tippit on the ground, one the button hit, one in the chest, and last one in the temple. Then the killer, with Tatum watching, starts loping, slow run, in what looks like his direction west on Tenth and Tatum thinks he's headed for him and guns his car forward and loses further sight temporarily, but sees in the rear view mirror the killer turn south on Patton and out of sight. Once Tatum sees the killer has gone south on Patton Tatum stops his car a second time and turns around and looks again and now he sees Callaway who has arrived, unseen by Tatum up to that point, almost to the position of the cruiser. Tatum sees Callaway in the vicinity of the cruiser and the fallen Tippit, and Tatum sees Callaway running beyond the cruiser (east) to Benavides' truck appealing to Benavides to drive so they can try to catch the killer. From Tatum's vantage point Callaway looks like a second man involved in the shooting and running in the opposite direction. Tatum knows there are a few other witnesses. This is reflected in the letter to Playboy. Or something like that?

·       That the shooting of police officer J. D. Tippitt after the assassination was apparently not part of anyone’s plan: November 22: “O Tippett [sic] (why?) – ask JA who is Tippet?”  — The Lafitte Datebook: A Limited Analysis by Dick Russell, author of the much-lauded 1993 breakthrough in the Kennedy investigation, The Man Who Knew Too Much.

An understanding of the Tippit murder is incomplete without factoring in the role played by FBI SA Bardwell Dewitt Odum. From Coup in Dallas  by Hank Albarelli with Leslie Sharp and Alan Kent . . .  

Odum, an agent of the federal government, was at the DPD headquarters only briefly before dashing to the Texas Theater where a suspect in the shooting of a Dallas police officer was about to be apprehended. It has yet to be explained what prompted Odum to attend that particular arrest in the middle of what should have been the most aggressive manhunt in the nation’s history. Why would his boss, SAC Gordon Shanklin pull one of his prize protégés from the search for Kennedy’s assassin to pursue a local shooting, unless of course, Shanklin had already been advised that Lee Oswald would not only be charged with gunning down Officer J.D. Tippit, but that he would soon be charged with the assassination of Kennedy. 

      Once Oswald was in custody at the Texas Theatre, Odum, instead of tracking federal arrests being made in critical hours of the assassination, inexplicably spent another hour and a half in pursuit of the Tippit shooting along with nearly a dozen DPD staff. Federal detentions in the Dallas area during that twenty-four hour period—persons of interest to the Feds since the spring of 1963—stand out: Jean Rene Souetre and Michel Mertz and possibly Michel Roux.

      Rather than being ordered to question Souetre and or Mertz or Roux, Odum seems focused on Tippit’s murder, even taking time to interview Helen Markham who had witnessed a young male fleeing the scene. In another rarely heralded essay published in the Fourth Decade in 1997, researcher Tom Wallace Lyons summed up Odum’s early influence over the Tippit investigation, asserting that Odum sewed the confusion that contributed to Markham being labeled as an inconsistent, unreliable witness for decades to come. 

      In another noteworthy timeline, while Odum is biding time in Oak Cliff, pursuing a case that was technically outside his jurisdiction, Lee Oswald’s various addresses were being nailed down at the school book depository. Meanwhile, Oswald was being driven to police headquarters in Car Number 2 under the custody of Jerry Hill and his colleagues. According to Bill Simpich, another researcher who has long recognized that the elusive Bard demands close scrutiny, Jerry Hill had been on the sixth floor of the depository building when Mannlicher-Carcano shells were found and reported as a match to the rifle that Bard Odum escorted to police headquarters. Either the police department and the FBI were stretched thin that afternoon, or this was one of numerous serendipitous coincidences that would unfold in the next few days. 

      Once Lee Oswald was identified as AWOL during an alleged formal roll call of depository employees, and once his addresses were known, including that of the Paines, Odum seems to have finally returned his keen eye to the assassination, and with every subsequent step he took, the profile of the lone nut commie suspect was advanced. By December 2, he was responsible for the transfer of a fragment of a bullet retrieved from the wall of General Edwin Walker’s study to Washington D.C. for comparison against fragments from Dealey Plaza. In light of the September 4 Lafitte datebook entry, which reads Hotshot – Walker (Caretaker), we’re forced to consider the possibility that Odum knew more about the Walker incident than has ever been contemplated. 

After transferring the rifle from the “scene of the crime” to DPD headquarters, after witnessing the arrest of Oswald at the Texas Theatre and following a stop off to interview a witness in the Tippit shooting, Odum either cooled his heels the rest of the afternoon, or pursued leads that were not documented or have not been released. We do know from records that he ended up with shells and slugs from the Tippit scene in his pocket.

And for those on this forum who have spent decades in pursuit of this investigation, deeper in the shadows we find Jack Crichton of Empire Trust and the 488th . . . 

A brief note on Jack and Roberta Pew of Sun Oil Company—best known for funding the Pew Charitable Trust: after arriving in Dallas, the couple assumed a low-key social life compared to their economic peers, preferring a behind the scenes role in pursuit of their very conservative politics. Nonetheless, they were privy to data disseminated judiciously by a number of national security agencies intent on keeping certain wealthy Americans apprised of national and global security issues. To reiterate, Pew employee Ilya Mamantov was seconded by Jack Crichton to serve as translator for the young Russian-born mother of two in the hours after her husband, Lee Harvey, had been arrested for the murder of Dallas Police Patrolman J. D. Tippitt. 

Rene  t  merde merde xxxx xxxx

-O Tippett [sic] (Why?)

-ask JA who is Tippet? [sic]

—Lafitte datebook, November 22, 1963

In 1964, Pew protégé Jack Crichton, as president of the Dallas Chapter of Alumni of Texas A&M University was responsible for securing scholarships to his alma mater, Texas A&M, for the sons of Officer J.D. Tippit.. . .

23 hours ago, Joseph McBride said:

From my book INTO THE NIGHTMARE, about strange discrepancies in

accounts of when McNamara heard the news

of the assassination. I find it patently unbelievable that I learned about

the assassination twenty minutes before the Secretary of Defense

supposedly heard the news, and I was a high school junior in Milwaukee:

 

Another indication of the way things were rapidly threatening to spiral out of control for Johnson in the immediate aftermath of the assassination is this report in Jim Bishop’s 1968 book The Day the President Was Shot: “Officials at the Pentagon were calling the White House switchboard at the Dallas-Sheraton Hotel asking who was now in command. An officer grabbed the phone and assured the Pentagon that Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and the Joint Chiefs of Staff ‘are now the President.’” This indication of a possible military coup underway, whether Johnson was wittingly involved in it or not, could have influenced his first decisions, including his controversial and seemingly somewhat irrational choice to be sworn in on Air Force One at Love Field in Dallas. Delaying his departure for Washington to take the oath was unnecessary since he had become president, according to the Constitution, immediately upon Kennedy’s death. An ulterior motive beyond what was publicly stated would help account for Johnson’s decision to commandeer Kennedy’s plane, for which he would take severe criticism from Kennedy aides and others.

William Kelly, writing on his website JFK Countercoup, theorizes that Johnson made that decision partly because Air Force One enabled him to make use of the most advanced and secure presidential communication lines at a time of maximum crisis: “All of the president’s communications were controlled by the White House Communications Agency (WHCA), then led by Colonel George McNally (code name ‘Star’), who was having lunch at the airport terminal when the assassination occurred and returned to Air Force One to ensure that the new president could communicate with anyone in the world. . . . The WHCA Command Center and base station for the Dallas portion of the Texas trip was set up in a room or suite of rooms at the Dallas Sheraton Hotel.” Kelly proposes that the strange message from the WHCA Command Center about McNamara and the Joint Chiefs being “the President” did not have to do simply with presidential succession but with the National Command Authority (NCA) nuclear release authority, which President Dwight D. Eisenhower had set up to control the command of nuclear weapons if the nation’s chief executive were disabled or killed. Kelly notes that under that plan, if a president were disabled or missing, the authority to use nuclear weapons would have passed to the secretary of defense. . . .

Where was McNamara at the time of the assassination? He and Attorney General Robert Kennedy were the most important members of the Kennedy cabinet still in Washington at the time; fully half of the ten-member cabinet, including Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Secretary of the Treasury C. Douglas Dillon (the cabinet officer responsible for the Secret Service), were in a plane bound for Japan, following a meeting in Honolulu to help decide Vietnam policy. But one of the many oddities of the official account of the assassination is that there are starkly contradictory accounts of McNamara’s whereabouts and activities in the immediate aftermath of the shooting in Dallas. In his 1995 book In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (with Brian VanDeMark), McNamara reports that he was at the Pentagon holding a conference about the defense budget that Kennedy planned to submit to Congress in January. With the secretary were with McGeorge Bundy; Kermit Gordon of the Budget Bureau; and Kennedy’s science adviser, Jerome Wiesner. Manchester reports in The Death of the President that during the meeting, McNamara was handed the first wire-service bulletin about shots being fired in Dallas, sent out at 12:34 by United Press International.

 

Simultaneously the Pentagon’s command center sounded a buzzer, awakening [Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman] General Maxwell Taylor, who was napping in his office between sessions with the Germans [the commanders of the West German Bundeswehr were meeting with the Chiefs that day]. . . . [McNamara] kept his head and made all the right moves. An ashen-faced aide came in with the bulletin. Jerry Wiesner studied the man’s expression as the secretary read it. Wiesner thought: The Bomb’s been dropped. McNamara quietly handed the slip around -- Wiesner felt momentary relief; anything was better than a nuclear holocaust -- and then the Secretary acted quickly. Adjourning his conference, he sent Mac Bundy back to the White House in a Defense limousine and conferred with Taylor and the other Joint Chiefs. Over the JCS signature they dispatched a flash warning to every American military base in the world.

 

1. Press reports President Kennedy and Governor Connally of Texas shot and critically injured. Both in hospital at Dallas, Texas. No official information yet, will keep you informed.

2. This is the time to be especially on the alert.

 

McNamara’s book, on the other hand, gives a considerably later time for when he learned the news, about 2 p.m. Eastern time, or 1 p.m. in Dallas. This seems bizarre, since it would mean that much of the world (including even me, a high school junior in Milwaukee) had known about the shooting for more than twenty minutes before the secretary of defense of the United States. McNamara writes about that meeting at the Pentagon:

 

In the midst of our discussion -- at about 2:00 p.m. -- my secretary informed me of an urgent, personal telephone call.  I left the conference room and took it alone in my office. It was Bobby Kennedy, even more lonely and distant than usual. He told me simply and quietly that the president had been shot.

I was stunned. Slowly, I walked back to the conference room and, barely controlling my voice, reported the news to the group. Strange as it may sound, we did not disperse: we were in such shock that we simply did not know what to do. So, as best as we could, we resumed our deliberations.

A second call from Bobby came about forty-five minutes later. The president was dead. Our meeting immediately adjourned amid tears and stunned silence.

 

Strange as it may sound, indeed. Why McNamara chose to put out that patently incredible story, twenty-eight years after Manchester published his far different report of a quickly-moving defense secretary working in concert with the chiefs to send out a worldwide alert, remains unclear. It’s conceivable that McNamara’s account represents a memory lapse or sloppy research, though he was always renowned for his sharp memory (it is still on display years later in Errol Morris’s 2003 film, The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, although McNamara’s memory conveniently falters briefly when he claims not to be sure whether he authorized the use of Agent Orange in the Vietnam War, a toxic chemical used while he was secretary of defense). McNamara’s account in his book  of his actions on November 22, 1963, conflicts oddly with Bishop’s report that the White House Communication Agency was claiming that the defense secretary and the chiefs were “the president” (Bishop doesn’t offer an exact time for that story, but he suggests it was while Johnson and Air Force One were still at Love Field). What is clear from these muddled accounts is that important events were taking place at the highest level of power that the public was not supposed to comprehend, even decades later.

 

 

Joseph, I suspect you agree that a more thorough analysis of the November 22 meeting down the hall in the Gold Room at the Pentagon between the Joint Chiefs and their equivalent from the Federal Republic of Germany is in order. As is widely known, Curtis LeMay was not in DC that day but instead, he was on a hunting trip in Canada. A seasoned Canadian researcher has done extensive research into the circumstances of LeMay's trip. With his permission, and in light of our pursuit of former members of Hitler's Third Reich apparatus (identified on this forum for some strange reason as members of the “National Socialist Party” ), I'm incorporating his details in a (forthcoming) monograph specific to the military history of Adenauer's Bundeswehr generals who were meeting with Taylor, Lemnitzer, et al. as President Kennedy was being assassinated in Dallas.

A draft introduction . . . 
 

While searching for information that might explain how John Connally ended up in the jump seat of the president’s limo, I was advised by Vince Palamara to check William Manchester’s account of the day.  Although Manchester merely reiterates that the seating arrangements were as chaotic at Love Field as they had been earlier that morning in Fort Worth, the following jumped off the page of his award-winning book, "The Death of a President: November 22-November25, 1963". According to Manchester,
 

On Friday, November 22 in Washington DC, "Tight security was also enforced in the Pentagon's Gold Room, down the hall from McNamara, where the Joint Chiefs of Staff were in session with the commanders of the West German Bundeswehr [armed forces of the Federal Republic of Germany]. General Maxwell Taylor, the Chiefs' elegant, scholarly Chairman, dominated one side of the table; opposite him was GENERAL FRIEDRICH A. FOERTSCH* [emphasis added], Inspector General of Bonn's armed forces. Everyone was dressed to the nines—the Germans out of Pflicht [duty], the Americans because they knew the Germans would be that way—and the meeting glittered with gay ribbons and braid. . . .

Simultaneously the Pentagon’s command center sounded a buzzer, awaken- 

ing General Maxwell Taylor, who was napping in his office between sessions 

with the Germans. McNamara had a tremendous reputation, and he 

deserved it. Despite his deep feeling for the President — the emotional 

side of his personality had been overlooked by the press, but it was very 

much there — he kept his head and made all the right moves. An ashen- 

faced aide came in with the bulletin. Jerry Wiesner studied the man’s 

expression as the secretary read it. Wiesner thought: The Bomb’s been 

dropped. McNamara quietly handed the slip around — Wiesner felt momentary relief; anything was better than a nuclear holocaust — and then 

the Secretary acted quickly. Adjourning his conference, he sent Mac 

Bundy back to the White House in a Defense limousine and conferred 

with Taylor and the other Joint Chiefs. Over the JCS signature they dis- 

patched a flash warning to every American military base in the world; 

1. Press reports President Kennedy and Governor Connally of Texas shot 

and critically injured. Both in hospital at Dallas, Texas. No official in- 

formation yet, will keep you informed. 

  In the Pentagon McNamara and the Joint Chiefs remained vigilant, 

though after their conference in the Secretary's office the Chiefs decided 

they should leave sentry duty to subordinate sentinels and rejoin their 

meeting. General Taylor in particular felt that it was important to present 

a picture of stability and continuity, that it would be an error to let their 

visitors from Bonn suspect the depth of the tragedy until more was known. 

At 2:30 he and his colleagues filed back into the Gold Room. He told the 

Germans briefly that President Kennedy had been injured. General Fried- 

rich Foertsch replied for his comrades that they hoped the injury was not 

too serious. The Chiefs did not reply, and for the next two hours they 

put on a singular performance. Aware that the shadow of a new war might 

fall across the room at any time, they continued the talks about dull mili- 

tary details, commenting on proposals by Generals Wessel and Huekelheim 

and shuffling papers and directives with steady hands. Even for men with 

their discipline it was a stony ordeal, and it was especially difficult for 

Taylor, who had to lead the discussion and whose appointment as Chair- 

man had arisen from his close relationship with the President. As America’s 

first soldier he would be expected to make the first military decision should 

war come. Meanwhile he had to sit erect and feign an interest in logistics 

and combined staff work. At 4:30 the meeting ended on schedule. The 

Joint Chiefs rose together and faced their rising guests. Taylor said evenly, 

“I regret to tell you that the President of the United States has been killed.” 

The Germans, bred to stoicism, collapsed in their chairs.

On 1/22/2023 at 1:54 PM, Roger Odisio said:

I don't see how Souetre any longer can be dismissed as a possible shooter.  The link between the CIA gangsters including Dulles and Harvey, Skorzany running training camps for assassins in Spain, and Souetre as one of his prized pupils, is clear. See the assassination organization charts, p. 566-8 in Coup in Dallas, for example.

 

Technically the CIA was forbidden from domestic actions, but they already had established an office of domestic affairs (and no one could do anything about that--to this day).  By '63 they had more than a decade of experience overthrowing governments and killing those overseas who tried to stand in the way. 

 

The CIA and most of Washington expected Nixon to win in '60.  When that wet behind the ears rich kid won instead they were surprised, not to mention upset.  They quickly realized Kennedy was a problem for their world plans.  A problem that continued to grow as Kennedy grew into the office.

 

By then they could call on a roster of the world's best criminals. The JFKA was their biggest job ever.  It paved the way for their current perch of power.  To think they wouldn't have called upon the best assassins available to eliminate JFK is ludicrous.  Providing such candidates was Skorzany's, the former National Socialist SS officer, job. 

 

DeGaulle's instant reaction that the same group that was trying to kill him got JFK is powerful evidence. He certainly knew a lot about his enemies. 

 

 'DeGaulle's instant reaction that the same group that was trying to kill him got JFK is powerful evidence. He certainly knew a lot about his enemies. 

Roger,
You're among the few since Coup was published who seems prepared to factor in the significance of Jean Souetre's attempt on de Gaulle in context of the plot for Dallas. 

In light of the appearances in the Lafitte datebook of Philippe de Vosjoli of the SDECE — who at the time was apparently no fan of de Gaulle, and OAS Capt. Souetre — who attempted to assassinate de Gaulle and was attempting to revive the efforts of the OAS in Algeria, it's impossible to ignore the possibility de Gaulle knew a good deal more about the Kennedy assassination than he ever let on.  I've wondered if this last tranche of assassination files being withheld for reasons of national security,  i.e. threat to relations with our most trusted allies in Europe? —  might shed light on what the French government knew, and when did it know it. 

Or, as we write in Coup, 

In early 1964, Jean Rene Souetre rose to a notorious prominence after the SDECE sent an inquiry to the FBI about Souetre and his presence in Dallas, Texas on the day President Kennedy was assassinated. The FBI had little in its files on Souetre, but the CIA notified the FBI that it had a large dossier on the Frenchman as well as photographs of him. The full content or extent of the CIA’s files on the Frenchman have never been revealed despite numerous Freedom of Information filings, all of which have been denied to date. Readers shall soon learn far more about the French and FBI inquiries, the CIA’s position on information about Souetre, and the Agency’s subsequent activities. 

            The one redacted page either from a secret memorandum or a cable dated April 1, 1964 on Souetre that was released by the CIA in 1977 reads:

8. Jean SOUETRE aka Michel ROUX aka Michel MERTZ—

On 5 March [1964], [Mr. Papich] of the FBI advised that the French had [hit] the Legal Attaché in Paris and also [the SDECE man] had queried the Bureau in New York City concerning subject stating that he had been Expelled from the U.S. at Fort Worth or Dallas 48 hours after the assassination. He was in Fort Worth on morning of 22 November and in Dallas in the afternoon. The French believe that he was expelled to either Mexico or Canada. In January he received mail from a dentist named Alderson living at 5803 Birmingham, Houston, Texas. Subject is believed to be identical with a Captain who is a deserter from the French Army and an activist in the OAS. The French are concerned because of de Gaulle’s planned visit to Mexico. They would like to know the reason for his expulsion from the US and his destination. Bureau files are negative and they are checking in Texas and with INS. They would like a check of our files with indications of what may be passed to the French. [The FBI’s Mr. Papich] was given a copy of CSCI-3/776, 742 previously furnished the Bureau and CSD3-3/655, 207 together with a photograph of Captain SOUETRE. 

Bracketed words were initially redacted by the CIA. This page is but a part of a page from a 14-page document. Where are the other pages? What do they say? As of early 2019, our FOIA requests have not been fulfilled.