Steven Gaal

Urging ‘New Path Forward,’ Tens of Thousands Demand End to EU Austerity

Protest in Brussels challenges policies that have “caused a mounting social and economic crisis”

http://rinf.com/alt-news/latest-news/urging-new-path-forward-tens-thousands-demand-end-eu-austerity/

Real investigation MLK ??????? NEVER !

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The House Select Committee on Assassinations had the FBI do background checks on prospective investigators, including Conrad "Pete" Batez, a Madison County deputy. Baetz served with the Amry Security Agency in the late 1960s. The ASA used electronic surveillance to spy on civil rights and anti-war activists during the Vietnam era. According to HSCA guidelines, investigators with intelligence backgrounds were to be prohibited because they would permit the appearance of the committee's inquiry being influenced by the intelligence community. After I reported his military service record in the Riverfront Times, in 1997, Baetz complained that I was misrepresenting his background. He said that he had only been a clerk for the Army Security Agency. Clerk or no clerk, Baetz worked for a military organization that spied on civil rights activists, including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., whose murder the HSCA was supposed to be investigating. So why did the FBI allow Baetz to join the HSCA as an investigator? Moreover, why did the committee use the FBI to do background checks on prospective investigators, when the FBI itself has always been a suspect in the King case? If nothing else, the following memo shows how far in advance Baetz had been selected for the job as congressional
investigator -- August 1977.

MEMORANDUM

TO: Dan Coulson, Special Agent Office of Congressional Affairs Federal Bureau of Investigations

FROM: Stephen J. Fallis, Deputy Chief Counsel
Select Committee on Assassinations U.S. House of Representatives

DATE: Au gust 15, 1977

RE: Background Investigations

1. Pursuant to the Memorandum of Understanding relative to the Federal Bureau of Investigations conducting background investigations for the House Select Committee on Assassinations I am forwarding to the Bureau the completed forms for the following member of Staff of the Select Committee on Assassinations:

The temporary employment recovery: Quantitative Easing and favorable banking policies creating a rising tide of temporary workers similar to Japan. Part-time workers up nearly 100 percent in US since 2007.

Good points, Peter. I wish more focus would be placed on the Secret Service; no matter who the conspirators were, the assassination would not have been possible if even a few of them had been doing their job.

John, I think we can state with certainty that we do know who didn't kill President Kennedy- Lee Harvey Oswald.

The logical suspects are many; Emory Roberts, William Greer, Bill Kellerman, J. Edgar Hoover, McGeorge Bundy, etc. We know that Hoover orchestrated the cover up of the crime, so it's reasonable to believe he at least had foreknowledge of the conspiracy. Roberts, Greer and Kellerman are naturally suspect because of their actions (or inaction) in Dealey Plaza. Bundy's very early declaration to JFK's cabinet members that it had already been established there was no conspiracy makes him suspicious, especially taken with the fact he authored NSAM 273, which totally contradicted JFK's recent policy directives in Vietnam as outlined in NSAM 263, before the assassination. Why would he have expected JFK to sign that? Of course, I think many of us believe there were powerful figures above these potential ground-level conspirators, but exposing them would naturally lead to uncovering the actual identities of those who planned the conspiracy.

But it's all a moot point, and we do have cause to be pessimistic, because the crime has never been honestly investigated, and unless we get a new crop of politicians, is highly unlikely to ever be.

SECRET SERVICE ????

Posted 26 March 2014 - 10:05 PM

LEFTY OBAMA ??

US covert actions in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia

http://rinf.com/alt-news/breaking-news/us-covert-actions-pakistan-yemen-somalia/

It has been stated that,"...we will never discover who killed John F. Kennedy. "

We can agree to disagree,for to me little "interpretation" is needed.

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(from JFK Assassination: The Garrison Commission")

===========================================
It is fair to say that not much in the way of Caribbean intrigue
went on in those days without the CIA, or at least CIA operatives, having
a finger in it. Thus the allegations of Gary Underhill, a weapons
expert and sometime CIA "unperson," may be quite plausible [RAMPARTS,
June 1976]. Immediately after the assassination, a distraught Underhill
told friends that a semi-autonomous CIA clique which had been
profiteering in narcotics and gun-running was implicated in the
assassination. Several months later, Underhill was found dead of a
bullet would in the head; although police decided it was self-inflicted,
the circumstances indicated otherwise. When an old friend wrote to
Underhill's widow asking about his demise, the reply came from an
official of a now defunct Washington firm, Falcon Aeronautics, Inc.,which Underhill was not associated with. Falcon Aeronautics assisted CIA JM-Wave anti-Castro operations.
+++++++++++++++++++++
FALCON AERONAUTICS, INC.
Ratting4 1 FALCON AERONAUTICS, INC. Ratting class for FALCON AERONAUTICS, INC. is 4.
Company data
Company number: 600633
Incorporate date: 22.11.1960

Company type: DOMESTIC BUSINESS CORPORATION
(Gone but "NOT !!!" forgotten)
+++++++++++++++++++++++
The Strength of the Wolf: The Secret History of America's War on Drugs
=======================
Valentine deeply examines the practices of the CIA, carefully and skillfully
making a connection between it and the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN). Valentine reported that Jack Ruby was a FBN asset. The head of the FBN ,George White, worked from time to time with CIA counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton.
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At a now defunct website was posted a page out of David Ferrie's phonebook.Next to the number for the CIA was penned next to it the extension that was identified as for Tom Karamessines.


http://www.history-m...RomanSaid_3.htm


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NATO's Secret Armies: Operation GLADIO and Terrorism in Western Europe

http://books.google.com/books/about/NATO_s_Secret_Armies.html?id=VAbkogswOmEC

Ganser Daniele - ‎2005 - 336 pages

The CIA invested millions into the secret Greek army and built an entire ...
Karamessines set up the CIA headquarters in Greece located in Athens on the
fifth ... In 1962 Karamessines was forced to leave Rome amidst rumours that he
had ...
•SEE PAGE 217 background Karamessines.
########################################
•SEE also http://educationforu...?showtopic=3658 background Karamessines.

Current status: Revoked

gee just make it up......its only a tragety ....only

Obama’s War On History

President Obama’s speech in Brussels this week was a shocking mélange of ignorance and arrogance masquerading as foreign policy.

Attempting to justify placing the US on war footing with Russia over the recent referendum in Crimea, the president stated:

#####

Kosovo only left Serbia after a referendum was organized not outside the boundaries of international law, but in careful cooperation with the United Nations and with Kosovo’s neighbors. None of that even came close to happening in Crimea.

Of course anyone who followed the Kosovo fiasco knows that never happened. There was no such thing. Made up. The Kosovo parliament declared independence unilaterally backed up by US/NATO military power to ensure the change of borders.

The US press? Silent on this monumental display of ignorance by the US commander in chief.

#####

Speaking of changing borders, Obama said:

#####

in the 21st century, the borders of Europe cannot be redrawn with force, that international law matters, that people and nations can make their own decisions about their future.

But that is just what the United States did 15 years ago this week via the 78 day bombing of Serbia to change the borders and extract Kosovo as an independent (though profoundly dysfunctional) state. The US bombing of Serbia was of course outside international law, as was US invasion and occupation of Iraq, attack and invasion of Afghanistan, invasion of Libya, bombing of Pakistan, Yemen, etc.

#####

The president celebrated…

the belief that through conscience and free will, each of us has the right to live as we choose, the belief that power is derived from the consent of the governed and that laws and institutions should be established to protect that understanding.

But in the modern world he champions — as opposed to his bad old system of using force to establish legitimacy — that consent of the governed is determined at the ballot box, rather than in burned-out buildings occupied by gangs of molotov cocktail throwing “activists.”

#####

Indeed, as David Hendrickson recently wrote in the National Interest :

####

Americans have previously acknowledged a right of revolution in a circumstance where there has been no previous instance of an election and no possibility of one. But in a regime that has a constitution and that has prescribed rules for the transfer of power? Revolution in those circumstances has been generally seen as deeply illegitimate, and for the simple reason that once you depart from that rule you are in no man’s land.

So where Obama may see…

#####

…the young people of Ukraine, who were determined to take back their future from a government rotted by corruption…

#####

the modern world he touts — free of the oppression where “order and progress can only come when individuals surrender their rights to an all-powerful sovereign” — can only be brought about by his own terms through the rule of law and respect of the sovereignty of all the people through a free and fair vote. Otherwise, logic is clear, we are precisely back in those bad old days where might makes right.

How can two contradictory concepts both be true at the same time?

The president claims to…

######

believe in democracy, with elections that are free and fair, and independent judiciaries and opposition parties, civil society and uncensored information so that individuals can make their own choices.

######

All the while he champions a regime that came to power in Ukraine in the opposite manner from that which he recognizes as legitimate. Recognizing this fact depends not on whether one agrees with the political persuasion of the ancien or nouveau régime in Kiev.

The president displays another astonishing disconnect with historical reality when he claims that “even in Iraq, America sought to work within the international system.”

It is not apocryphal that the United States precisely violated international law in its attack on Iraq, as it ignored the United Nations Security Council and instead made its own ad hoc “coalition of the willing” which through sheer will of the US was supposedly granted some manner of legitimacy. As if from some magic fairy dust.

Or could it have been through the very notion condemned in Obama’s speech “that bigger nations can bully smaller ones to get their way – that recycled maxim that might makes right.”

What is perhaps most troubling is the president (and his advisors) have demostrated that the policies that may well determine whether we all will perish in a World War III are being made by people without even a passing familiarity with recent history. Those who would rather Tweet “selfies” like self-obsessed adolescents rather than open a history book.

Or, sadly perhaps, it is cynicism in the extreme: perhaps they do know better but count on the ignorance of the rest of us. Is that a safe bet?

Do you think and disagree with the main stream media in that the USA is experiencing a recession instead of a 'weak' recovery ????? You are having a non-conformity experince and are thus mentally ill. YES YOU ARE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Gaal)

Creativity and Non-Conformity Now listed as a Mental Illness by Psychiatrists

LEFTY OBAMA ??

http://rinf.com/alt-news/latest-news/obama-suddenly-defends-u-s-invasion-iraq-mainstream-media-shrug/

http://rinf.com/alt-news/breaking-news/little-change-nsa-metadata-collection/

• SEE PAGE 217 background Karamessines.

• SEE also http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=3658 background Karamessines.

http://www.blacklistednews.com/Census_Office_Survey_Scandal_Grows_as_Inflation_Stats_Faked/34072/0/38/38/Y/M.html

The implication is that Walmart preys on the poor, that the retailer has somehow created poor people by paying low wages. That it relies on government assistance in a way that goes beyond accepting payment from shoppers via government programs. According to Business Insider:

Walmart, for the first time in its annual reports, acknowledges that taxpayer-funded social assistance programs are a significant factor in its revenue and profits. This makes sense, considering that Walmart caters to low-income consumers. But what’s news here is that the company now considers the level of social entitlements given to low-income working and unemployed Americans important enough to underscore it in its cautionary statement.

Not quite.

It’s not the first time Walmart noted that a reduction in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) would hurt business. It may have been the first time that was mentioned in an annual report, but that’s because the reduction took effect during the fiscal year in question.

In November, benefits for a family of four were reduced by $36 a month. Benefits had been increased as part of the Recovery Act in 2009, but Congress allowed the increase to expire on Nov. 1.

An estimated 48 million Americans benefit from SNAP while roughly 80% of U.S. consumers shop at Walmart at some point during the year.

Not all of them use SNAP, but the majority have some kind of budgetary constraint and it’s a number that keeps growing. Ten years ago, roughly 50% of Walmart shoppers cited low prices as the most important reason to shop at Walmart; today that number is 75%, said Andy Murray, Walmart senior vice president, creative, speaking at the Shopper Marketing Summit this week.

Walmart shoppers are particularly sensitive to fluctuations in the price of gas, to small tax increases or to anything that adds another $20 burden to a household in any given week. Budgets are tight and getting tighter all the time, in spite of a slowly recovering economy.

Walmart is hardly the only retailer to be affected by a reduction in SNAP benefits, or to say so in financial documents. The dollar store segment is also vulnerable. Roughly $4 billion in SNAP benefits were vaporized, money that was once spent at U.S. stores, not just at Walmart. This was bad news for shoppers and retailers, across multiple channels.

As one grocery executive said in an online retail forum regarding the issue, “This cut hurts all of our sales, not just Walmart, let me make that clear. The struggle is universal for retailers, and sales are down around 8-10% since the first of the year.”

I’m not a fan of criticizing other reporters or publications, but these headlines are designed to get clicks, to be shared, to fan the flames of outrage. In this case, it’s a false and very misplaced outrage.

Walmart didn’t just reveal how poor its customers really are, it revealed just how poor so many U.S. shoppers are.

Also see

=======

‘I Have To Choose Between Food And Rent’: Meet The McDonald’s Workers Fighting For Fair Wages

The Challenge Of Being Poor At America’s Richest Colleges

Pat Holloway
in 1950 he entered the University of Texas under an accelerated program allowing him to earn both a bachelor's degree and a law degree in 6 rather than 7 years. He graduated first in his UT Law School Class of 1954. He was Grand Chancellor, Articles Editor of the Texas Law Review, Moot Court Semi-Finalist, a member of Phi Delta Phi legal fraternity, and won the annual prize for best and most law review writing. After graduation, he joined the firm now known as Thompson & Knight, then the oldest and largest law firm in Dallas.
- See more at: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/statesman/obituary.aspx?pid=155860351#sthash.XWixq8tE.dpuf
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Pat Holloway worked for the law firm (Thompson & Knight) which was the law firm of the (at least post assassination conspiratorial) Great Southwest Corporation.
Two witnesses of Oswald at the rifle range were employees of the Great Southwest Corporation. ((Charles Camplen and James F. Dale, Great Southwest Warehouse, 26 WH 371-72.)).To paraphrase Peter Dale Scott, the Great Southwest provided Marina with a manager, an attorney, and a hideaway. Her manager was James Martin. The lawyer was William Mackenzie, and the hideaway was the Six Flags Hotel.
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Thus GHWB's lawyer ,Pat Holloway, (see above posts # 46, #47 ,#48) also was a lawyer for the assassination conspiratorial Great Southwest Corporation. LHO's "best friend" in Dallas was George De Mohrenschildt and De Mohrenschildt was also a friend of GHWB and associated with the Dulles-CBS milieu.
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Lewis MacNaughton was a board member of the Great Southwest Corporation and Empire Trust (Jack Crichton was also part of Empire Trust. (see above posts) .
DeGolyer and MacNaughton was founded in 1936 by Everette Lee DeGolyer.DeGolyer and MacNaughton became the worlds largest independent oil analysis corporation.
Joe Zeppa had a history with DeGloyer when they partnered in an oil operation in 1953. Of note, Crichton was appointed head of Empire Trust, on whose board was L. W. Douglas, brother-in-law of John McCloy.

see LINK FOR IMPORTANCE OF MACNAUGHTON http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=17035&hl=%2Blord+%2Bcordray

PRE ASSASSINATION =MacNaughton's personal accountant (not corporate) George Bouhe helped drive around Marina Oswald and by some accounts also babysat the Oswald children. Additionally former MacNaughton employee Ford housed Marina post assassination.

Bouhe stated he knew Jack Ruby. (Probe Magazine)

AND OF COURSE FROM THE WC

Mr. LIEBELER - At any time after November 1 and prior to December 28, 1962, did you see or talk to Oswald? December 28 is the date of the Ford party.
Mr. BOUHE - Yes.
Mr. LIEBELER - From November 1 to December 28?
Mr. BOUHE - I would say that by some unanticipated chance I might have run into him and her or both at the De Mohrenschildt's, but I wouldn't swear. Let me add that certainly no communication was maintained on my part.


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BLOGGER leslie sharp says:
March 29, 2013 at 4:55 pm

Follow up to Joe Zeppa and the Bush’s flight from Tyler (where they were visiting with the Ulmers) to Ft. Worth to Dallas.

In addition to Joe Zeppa, Lone Star Steel board members included FNB Dallas President Nathan Adams and Texas Bank and Trust CEO W. W. Overton. Mr. Overton’s president was his relative by marriage, Brenham native Pearson Beverly Garrett, board member on the very limited Bell Helicopter board. Also on the board of TB&T were Clint Murchison ((Board member Great Southwest,Gaal)) and Robert Wiley Baxter. Mr. Baxter was the founder and president of Rio Grande National Life Insurance where Louis Steven Witt was employed. Witt walked from the Rio Grande building some ten or twelve blocks if I recall correctly to position himself at the end of the trail so to speak, in order to taunt Kennedy with his umbrella. TB&T was located on the corner of, or in the block adjacent to the corner, Lamar and Poydras, the direction that Oswald pursued when leaving the TSBD.
===========

===========

"taunt Kennedy with his umbrella" ....??? or signal the shooters ...? OR BOTH !!...????? Gaal ??

In

FROM THE KONFORMIST

1963, Witt was an insurance salesman for the Rio Grande National Life Insurance company, which anchored the eponymous Rio Grande Building in downtown Dallas. It’s an interesting building. Among the other outfits housed in the building was the Office of Immigration and Naturalization—a place Lee Harvey Oswald visited repeatedly upon his return from Russia, ostensibly to deal with matters concerning the immigration status of his Russian-born wife, Marina. Another occupant of the Rio Grande Building was the US Secret Service, so notably lax in its protection of Kennedy that day, breaking every rule of security on every level.
A major client of Rio Grande was the US military, to which it provided insurance.

PART 2 (of 3 parts)

(SEE JOE ZEPPA ABOVE POST,BELOW) (of note Fetcher Prouty stated JFK was killed by Greek machanics, see Greece below)

++++++++++++++++++

Bush and the JFK Hit, Part 4: Barbara’s Hair-Raising Day

What possible connection could there have been between George H.W. Bush and the assassination of John F. Kennedy? Or between the C.I.A. and the assassination? Or between Bush and the C.I.A.? For some people, apparently, making such connections was as dangerous as letting one live wire touch another. Here, in anticipation of the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination in November, is the fourth part of a ten-part series of excerpts from WhoWhatWhy editor Russ Baker’s bestseller, Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America’s Invisible Government and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years. The story is a real-life thriller.

Note: Although these excerpts do not contain footnotes, the book itself is heavily footnoted and exhaustively sourced. (The excerpts in Part 4 come from Chapter 4 of the book, and the titles and subtitles have been changed for this publication.)

For Part 1, please go here; Part 2, here; Part 3, here;

Block, Bridge, and Beautify

In the art of propaganda, and in the daily business of public relations, a cardinal rule is that if a problem emerges, it must be managed immediately. The trick is to quickly acknowledge and gain control of the new material, mitigating the damage by redirecting it in a beneficial way. This is known in tradecraft as “block and bridge.”

Thus it was that the first and only Bush family acknowledgment of where Poppy Bush was on that red-letter day came in classic form – from the wife, in the most innocuous swathing. The venue was in her 1994 book, Barbara Bush: A Memoir, which was published ten months after the document’s declassification. Deep in that book, mostly a compendium of narrow-gauge, self-serving recollections, there it was: not just a recollection of the assassination, but the reproduction of an actual letter written by Barbara on the very day, at the very moment, that Kennedy was shot. The letter has plenty of details, but it omits one important personal item from that day: Poppy’s call to the FBI; perhaps Poppy did not mention it to her?

Barbara begins to describe that fateful day on page 59 of her memoirs:

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:

The following is how the excerpts appear in the book, ellipses and all.

Dearest Family,Wednesday I took Doris Ulmer out for lunch. They [Al and Doris Ulmer] were here from England and they had been so nice to George in Greece. That night we went to . . .I am writing this at the Beauty Parlor and the radio says that the President has been shot. Oh Texas – my Texas – my God – let’s hope it’s not true. I am sick at heart as we all are. Yes, the story is true and the Governor also. How hateful some people are.. . . Since the Beauty Parlor the President has died. We are once again on a plane. This time a commercial plane. Poppy picked me up at the beauty parlor – we went right to the airport, flew to Ft. Worth and dropped Mr. Zeppo off (we were on his plane) and flew back to Dallas. We had to circle the field while the second presidential plane took off. Immediately Pop got tickets back to Houston and here we are flying home. We are sick at heart. The tales the radio reporters tell of Jackie Kennedy are the bravest I’ve ever heard. The rumors are flying about that horrid assassin. We are hoping that it is not some far right nut, but a “commie” nut. You understand that we know they are both nuts, but just hope that it is not a Texan and not an American at all.

I am amazed at the rapid-fire thinking and planning that has already been done. L.B.J. has been the president for some time now – 2 hours at least and it is only 4.30.

My dearest love to you all,

Bar

A Tap on the Shoulder

The Tyler story is borne out by the personal recollections of Aubrey Irby, then vice president of the local Kiwanis Club (and later president of Kiwanis International during Bush’s vice presidency). As Irby explained to the author Kitty Kelley, Bush had been waiting to deliver a luncheon speech to his organization – to one hundred men gathered at Tyler’s Blackstone Hotel.

“I remember it was a beautiful fall day,” recalled Aubrey Irby, the former Kiwanis vice president. “George had just started to give his speech when Smitty, head bellhop, tapped me on the shoulder to say that President Kennedy had been shot. I gave the news to the president of the club, Wendell Cherry, and he leaned over to tell George that wires from Dallas confirmed President Kennedy had been assassinated.“George stopped his speech and told the audience what had happened. ‘In view of the President’s death,’ he said, ‘I consider it inappropriate to continue with a political speech at this time. Thank you very much for your attention.’ Then he sat down. I thought that was rather magnanimous of him to say and then to sit down, but I’m a Republican of course, and I was all for George Bush. Kennedy, who was bigger than life then, represented extremely opposite views from Bush on everything.”

In a 2007 interview with me, Irby described George H. W. Bush at the time of the news as matter-of-fact and supremely well composed. It was not unlike his own son’s composure in another moment of crisis, when, after being told about the 9/11 attacks, he calmly returned to reading “The Pet Goat” to a class of Florida second graders. As for Barbara, she miraculously found herself in the unique position of actually writing a very long letter that began while Kennedy was alive, captured the first news of the assassination, and then concluded with confirmation of his death. She, like Poppy, showed impressive composure and focus.

A Lunch with Doris – But where were Al Ulmer and Poppy?

Barbara’s curious role as recording secretary to history-in-the-making was interesting enough that one would expect the letter to have surfaced well before 1994. Yet, until it appeared in Barbara’s memoirs, it was not even known to exist. Meanwhile, the original letter itself has not turned up. Thus, many questions remain – questions that I hoped to pose to Poppy and Barbara, who declined to be interviewed for this book.

The excerpted letter warrants careful scrutiny, especially because of all the perplexing particulars. The note begins with a dull thud – a bland mention of a lunch with a “Doris Ulmer.” No Ulmer appears in any of the Bushes’ other books, which list hundreds of family friends, well-known and completely obscure. Therefore, presumably only very close Bush relatives, such as her children, would know who Doris Ulmer was or would even conceivably wish to learn of Barbara lunching with her. No one else would understand that George had even been in Greece on the occasion Barbara mentions when the Ulmers were said to be so nice to him – nor would anyone else know in what way they were so nice to him.

And yet, the style and comments in the assassination portion of the letter – “we are hoping that it is not some far right nut but a ‘commie’ nut” – are odd things to write to children.

It’s not clear from Barbara’s memoirs who the recipients of the letter were. She says “Dearest Family” and that it was “a letter home.” But those of her children who were at home were all ten years old or younger. The eldest, George W., was away at prep school in New England. Also, it would seem odd to write “a letter home” if you were only gone from home for several days of an in-state campaign swing – you would likely be back home before the letter arrived. And she signed it “Bar,” not the typical identifier in a letter to young children.

Photo taken in the early 1960’s

So the “letter home” more logically would have been to her other home, that is, to her parents living in the house she had left nearly two decades before. But that scenario really doesn’t make much sense either. Her mother had died in a 1949 auto accident, and her father had remarried. Barbara was known not to be especially close to her family during a period of many years and had not attended her mother’s funeral. Was “love to you all” intended for her father and stepmother? Her siblings had also long since left the nest, but perhaps she circulated correspondence among them. Besides, how did Barbara happen upon such a letter that she had purportedly written thirty years earlier? Had she kept a copy and recently discovered it? Had relatives unearthed it?Whether or not the letter was an authentic contemporaneous document, one can assume that many of the particulars of that day were in the letter because they were true and verifiable. Hence, they are of interest here.

Poppy’s call to the FBI about Parrott being the potential assassin obviously did nothing to assist the FBI in any meaningful way. But it clearly did something else: It established in government investigative files that, at the time of the assassination in Dallas, Poppy and Barbara were in Tyler, Texas. (These were things that Poppy had good reason to want established, as we’ll see later.)

The notion that there was more to the phone call than simple altruism and patriotism can be found in an examination of the most seemingly insipid of matters – such as Barbara Bush’s lunch with Doris Ulmer.

Although there were numerous Doris Ulmers in the United States at the time, only one matches the description of an old friend who had helped Poppy when Poppy visited Greece, and who was in 1963 a resident of London: Mrs. Alfred C. Ulmer Jr.

“God, we had fun.”Al Ulmer is sometimes described as having filled the positions of “attaché” and “first secretary” at the U.S. embassy in Athens from the late forties through the mid-fifties. Yet a memorial tribute to him in the alumni publication of his alma mater, Princeton, scores higher on the candor meter, describing his life in the wartime OSS and the CIA. Ulmer was a good friend and confidant of CIA director Allen Dulles. He embodied the attitude that nobody could tell the CIA what to do – nobody. “We went all over the world and we did what we wanted,” Ulmer later recalled. “God, we had fun.” He also managed coups.

When JFK forced Dulles out of the CIA following the Bay of Pigs debacle, Ulmer left as well. He went to work for the Greek shipping magnate Stavros Niarchos. That Ulmer had not fully left the espionage racket is suggested in part by Niarchos’s own long history with the CIA, which he assisted with many covert operations. In fact, the company Ulmer ran, Niarchos London Ltd., was itself a CIA proprietary according to author Peter Evans, who knew Niarchos personally. Niarchos would in turn be introduced into Poppy Bush’s immediate circle, buying Oak Tree Farm, a prime Kentucky horse-breeding property, and leasing it to the manager of Poppy Bush’s financial affairs, William Stamps Farish III.

By 1963, Poppy Bush seems to have known Ulmer for at least a decade. The reference in Barbara’s letter to the Ulmers being “so nice” to Poppy when Poppy visited Greece likely referred to the early 1950s, when Al Ulmer was station chief in Athens and Poppy Bush was beginning his frenetic world travels, ostensibly on behalf of his modestly sized Midland oil company.

Apparently, the relationship had continued, because records at the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Texas, show Bush stopping off to see Ulmer in London in the summer of 1963 – as part of Bush’s self-described “world tour.” (Poppy would make another in 1965, and again visit with Ulmer.)

Ulmer also had another connection to Bush – via Robert Maheu. The Zapata Offshore drilling rig that Poppy Bush had positioned near Cuba in 1958 was located off Cay Sal island, which was leased by Howard Hughes. At the time, Hughes employed Maheu as his private spook. A former FBI man whose private security firm sometimes fronted for the CIA on unauthorized operations, Maheu was, in turn, an old friend of Ulmer’s. The two had worked together on cooking up the military revolt against Indonesian president Sukarno in 1958 . . . Maheu was later involved in a series of failed plots, commencing in 1960, that involved recruiting the Mafia for a hit on Fidel Castro. In all such things, one finds a certain circularity.

The Mysterious Flights of Mr. Zeppa’s Plane

Besides Doris Ulmer, the other person Barbara mentioned in her letter is “Mr. Zeppo” – the man who had lent them his plane on November 22. As with so many other clues in documents concerning Poppy Bush, this one appears a dead end until one realizes that the name has been slightly misspelled. There was in fact no Mr. Zeppo, but there was a man, since deceased, by the name of Zeppa. Joe Zeppa founded the Tyler-based Delta Drilling Company, which became one of the world’s largest contract oil drillers, with operations around the globe

By the time Poppy came to Tyler to speak to the Kiwanis, Joe Zeppa was a good man to know. One of his sons, Chris, had previously served as the county Republican chairman, and Joe Zeppa himself owned and lived in the Blackstone Hotel, the site of Bush’s Kiwanis speech.

Barbara, in her letter, notes the use of Zeppa’s plane to leave Tyler early in the afternoon on November 22. What she does not mention is that, in all probability, she and Poppy had also arrived on Zeppa’s plane. The very fact that Zeppa lent his plane to Poppy is surprising, according to Zeppa’s son Keating, who was on company business in Argentina at the time. “Joe Zeppa was not a great one for having an actual active hand in a political campaign,” he told me, adding: “He was not one to say, ‘Here, I’ll send the plane after you.’ If Joe Zeppa were going in a given direction and a politician wanted to go along, that was fine with him.” When told that the plane bypassed Dallas’s downtown Love Field, dropped Zeppa off at Fort Worth’s municipal airport, and then backtracked to Dallas, Keating Zeppa said that was not something that his father ordinarily would have done.

Though the movements of Zeppa’s plane on the afternoon of November 22 once it left Tyler are intriguing, much more important is where it came from on the morning of November 22: Dallas.

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 AAODC, it is likely that he attended that 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 that Kennedy was assassinated.

This brings us to the vexing question of Poppy’s motive in calling the FBI at 1.45 p.m. on November 22, to identify James Parrott as a possible suspect in the president’s murder, and to mention that he, George H. W. Bush, happened to be in Tyler, Texas. He told the FBI that he expected to spend the night of November 22 at the Sheraton Hotel in Dallas – but instead, after flying to Dallas on Zeppa’s plane, he left again almost immediately on a commercial flight to Houston. Why state that he expected to spend the night at the Dallas Sheraton if he was not planning to stay? Perhaps this was to create a little confusion, to blur the fact that he had already stayed at the hotel – the night before. Anyone inquiring would learn that Bush was in Tyler at the time of the assassination and planned to stay in Dallas afterward, but canceled his plan following JFK’s death.

A Tip from Poppy

As curious as all that is, nothing is quite so odd as the object of Bush’s patriotic duty. Nobody seems to have believed that James Parrott had the capability – or even the inclination – to assassinate Kennedy. Bush acknowledged in the tip-off call that he had no personal knowledge of anything. He passed the buck to others who supposedly knew more about the threat and about Parrott – though what those others knew, if anything, has never emerged, until now.

During the period Bush ran the Harris County Republican organization, it had no more than a handful of employees. Among those were the two women he had mentioned to the FBI as potential sources on Parrott’s alleged threat (“Mrs. Fawley” and “Arline Smith”), and a sole male – by the name of Kearney Reynolds. Though Bush made no mention of Reynolds, he was in fact the one who was most closely connected to Parrott.

Shortly after receiving Bush’s call, the FBI dispatched agents to the Parrott house. At the time, Parrott was away, but according to a bureau report, his mother provided an alibi – likely in a motherly attempt to protect her son – which Parrott himself would later refute in his own explanation of the day’s events.

She advised [James Parrott] had been home all day helping her care for her son Gary Wayne Parrott whom they brought home from the hospital yesterday. [Mrs. Parrott’s other son could not help, because he was in jail.]

She also mentioned another person who could provide an alibi.

Mrs. Parrott advised that shortly after 1:00 p.m. a Mr. Reynolds came by their home to advise them of the death of President Kennedy, and talked to her son James Parrott about painting some signs at Republican Headquarters on Waugh Drive.

In reality, both Reynolds and James Parrott put the visit between 1:30 and 1:45 p.m. The president’s death became public at 1:38 p.m. central time, when CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite read an Associated Press news flash. Poppy Bush’s call to the FBI followed seven minutes later.

Sometime later that day, agents interviewed Parrott himself. Parrott stated that he had never made any threats against Kennedy and that he had no knowledge of the assassination beyond what he had learned in news accounts. He indicated the extent of his dissent: picketing members of the Kennedy administration when they came to town. In a 1993 interview, Parrott stated that Reynolds had come to his home to ask him to paint some signs for the Republican headquarters – and informed him of the president’s death. Parrott also provided the FBI with Reynold’s first name and said that both were members of the Young Republicans.

The following day, agents interviewed Kearney Reynolds.

On November 23, 1963, Mr. Kearney Reynolds, 233 Red Ripple Road, advised he is a salaried employee of the Harris County Republican Party. He advised at approximately 1:30 p.m., November 22, 1963, he went to the home of James Parrott, 711 Park, and talked to Parrott for a few minutes. He advised he could vouch for Parrott’s presence at 1711 Park between 1:30 p.m. and 1:45 p.m. on November 22, 1963.

What is so remarkable about all this is that at the precise moment when Poppy was calling the FBI with his “tip” about a possible suspect about whom he could offer few details, Poppy’s own assistant was at the suspect’s home, transacting business with him on behalf of Poppy. Clearly Parrott was far better known to Poppy than he let on. Why was Reynolds supposed to go to Parrott’s house at this time? The net effect was that Reynolds bailed Parrott out, by providing him with an alibi. Thus Parrott became Poppy’s alibi, and Poppy’s assistant became Parrott’s. Everyone was taken care of. While the point was to generate two separate alibis, drawing attention to their interconnectedness was problematic. Because when the full picture emerges, the entire affair appears as a ruse to create a paper trail clearing Poppy, should that become necessary. Parrott was merely a distraction and a minor casualty, albeit a person who ought not face lasting consequences or attract undue attention.

(Recent efforts to speak with Parrott were unsuccessful. All telephone numbers associated with the Parrott family, including James Parrott, his mother, brother, nieces, and nephews are disconnected, and no current information on any of them is readily obtainable.)

In 2007, I interviewed Kearney Reynolds. In the interview – which did not initially touch on the FBI report – Reynolds exhibited an excellent memory for detail and extensive knowledge from that period, as the Republicans challenged the Democratic monopoly in Texas politics. He described the politics of the period, Bush’s chairmanship, and the operation of the Republican headquarters – which he said Bush had relocated into an old house in the Montrose section of Houston, a property that Reynolds said the staff dubbed “the Haunted House.”

With prompting, Reynolds confirmed that, due to the temporary absence of an executive director, he was the only full-time male employee, along with a secretary and perhaps a receptionist. He coordinated precinct chairpersons and other volunteers, and thus was the main person to have contact with people like Parrott.

I asked him if he had heard or read of Bush’s call from Tyler to the FBI regarding a threat to Kennedy. Reynolds said he was unaware of it. However, he did then offer, almost as an afterthought, his recollection, not of visiting Parrott that day, but of being asked to accompany Parrott down to the office of the Secret Service:

There was a young man who came around headquarters . . . and somebody said that he had made a threat against Kennedy and this was, I believe, this came up after the assassination . . . The end result was, it was suggested that I contact the Secret Service, the local Secret Service, and I accompanied this young man . . . And we went down, and this was kind of a strange kid, mild-mannered, quiet, kind of seemed to be living in another world, and I took him down one day, escorted him down there.

At that point in our conversation, I shared with Reynolds the details of the FBI report (including Parrott’s name), which stated explicitly that Reynolds had actually visited Parrott at home at around 1:30 p.m. on November 22, or precisely the time that Poppy Bush was calling the FBI.

Well I never went to the guy’s house because, as I remember, the little episode that I mentioned – as I recall, I met him at the headquarters, and we went on downtown to the Secret Service office.

Asked why he would even be accompanying a man whom he said he did not know well – and whom his own boss believed to have threatened the life of the president – to the Secret Service office, Reynolds replied that he did not know, but only perhaps because Bush himself was out of town: “I worked a great deal with the volunteers and the precinct chairman, and probably on a face-to-face, name-to-name basis, probably knew more of them than almost anybody else.”

At that point, Reynolds said his memory had been refreshed. “I knew him by name and sight . . . It was just sort of a casual [acquaintance] within the context of working at the headquarters.” Reynolds mentioned that many of the volunteers were women, so presumably Parrott stood out.

After I read him a portion of the FBI memo, more recollections came back.

I seem to remember that some of this did brew up before the Kennedy assassination.…Kennedy came to Houston, I think on a Thursday night, and he was assassinated on Friday morning.

Reynolds says he was asked to attend an event Thursday night at the home of a party activist named Marjorie Arsht.

There was some kind of little social-political thing at her house, and I was asked to be there and watch Parrott, which I think I did. And again this is conditional because my memory is just not that good. Now, but I do remember the following day or the day after or whatever after the assassination, that somebody called me and asked if I was with Parrott that night or whatever, and I answered yes. I think I remember that.

I asked him why they wanted him to watch Parrott. “I don’t know,” said Reynolds hesitantly.

He was just – he wasn’t your everyday campus guy. He just seemed kind of distant and remote – quiet, polite, soft spoken, but didn’t talk much and just seemed distant. Now who or to what extent other people talked to him or perceived him to be a little on the edge, I don’t know.

He went on to describe people who would come into the headquarters and rant for two hours on some pet topic, like a return to the gold standard, and why you might want to keep an eye on such a person. But then he agreed that Parrott was not such a person.

In fact, as the FBI report reveals, he was quite harmless – barely able to fend for himself. He had only a seventh grade education, had been discharged from the Air force by a psychiatrist, gone into sign-painting, lived with his mother, and apparently volunteered regularly with the Harris County GOP quietly and without incident.

Until the Bush phone call.

No Harm Done

The cumulative result was that Poppy was listed in government files as having been in Tyler on November 22, 1963 – while Parrott faced no long-term consequences for having been secretly accused.

In the aforementioned 1993 interview, Parrott would insist that for many years he had been unaware that it was Bush who had made the accusation against him. He also noted that he had actually gone on to work for Bush’s unsuccessful presidential reelection campaign in 1992. In an article covering the frenzied GOP-convention podium attacks on the Clinton-Gore team over family values, Parrott is described as passing out flyers saying, “No queers or baby killing,” while wearing a plastic shield over his face, explaining that it was protection against the AIDS virus.

As time passed, Parrott increasingly told a story that meshed with Bush’s, inflating his own significance along the lines of what the Bush forces were putting out. “It was mainly a rumor put out by those trying to neutralize us,” he said in the 1993 interview, claiming that he and other conservatives were in the middle of a bitter struggle with Bush and other “moderates” over the need to go after those suspected of Communist activities.

That said, the notion that Parrott was active in any sort of aggressive rightist circles seems either untrue or irrelevant to what actually happened on November 22. More likely, Parrott was simply set up, his right-wing ideology used as a red herring by Poppy to legitimate his phone call. After all, if Parrott did not have an ideological motivation to kill Kennedy, why would he be considered a threat?

Another curiosity: either the FBI agent who took Bush’s phone call, or Bush himself, misspelled the surnames of the two supposed witnesses whom Bush said would know more about Parrott. To be sure, if the phone numbers provided for them were correct, the FBI would be able to find them. But years later, researchers who tried had difficulty figuring out who those people were – or how to track them down. In fact, only extensive cross-referencing reveals that “Mrs. Fawley” is actually a Mrs. Thawley. And “Arline Smith” turns out to be Aleene Smith.

These were either mistakes or deliberate errors; in any case, it is reminiscent of the way Barbara Bush mangled their friend Mr. Zeppa’s name in her letter. George Bush knew both of these women well. Nancy Brelsford Thawley was vice chair of the Harris County Republican Party, and Aleene Smith was a well-known Texas Republican activist who worked for Bush at Zapata Offshore; both women remained with Bush for many years thereafter, accompanying him to Washington. Bush should have at least known how to spell their name.

The background of the FBI agent is also of note. Graham Kitchel was unusually close to J. Edgar Hoover, and his record is full not only of commendations from the head of the vast organization but also of personal notes, including a get-well card in 1963 from Hoover after Kitchel underwent surgery. In addition, in a 1990s interview, Kitchel’s brother George, an offshore oil engineer, explained that he, George Kitchel, was an old friend of George H.W. Bush.

In summary, then, Bush called in a pointless tip about an innocent fellow to an FBI agent whom he knew, and whom he knew could be counted on to file a report on this tip – out of what may have been hundreds of calls, some of them not even worthy of documenting. And, after a cursory investigation, the tip was confirmed as useless. But the call itself was hardly without value. It established for the record, if anyone asked, that Poppy Bush was not in Dallas when Kennedy was shot. By pointing to a seemingly harmless man who lived with his mother, Bush appeared to establish his own Pollyannaish ignorance of the larger plot.

While Parrott had eyewitnesses to his being in Houston before, after, and at the time of a shooting that took place 240 miles away, Bush had Kiwanis eyewitnesses to where he was at around 12:30, the time of the shooting and the scheduled time of his luncheon speech.

The big mystery, of course, is the call to the FBI. Bush clearly made the call; Parrott clearly was never any threat. Therefore, Poppy Bush was willing to divert the investigative resources of the FBI on one of the busiest days in its history. Beyond that are the baffling particulars: Why did Bush have one of his people visit Parrott’s house almost exactly as Poppy was fingering Parrott as a possible suspect? And why was Bush so determined to establish his presence in Tyler that day – and to document, as it were, his concern for Kennedy’s well-being? Why was Parrott so unperturbed to have been falsely accused by Poppy Bush?

The answer may lie in Poppy’s mention to the FBI that he would be traveling next from Tyler to Dallas, and that he would be staying at the Sheraton. This was, in fact, akin to a magician’s trick – drawing the audience’s attention slightly from the real action. In truth, Poppy had already been at the Sheraton in Dallas – the night before, speaking to the AAODC convention. By telling the FBI that he was planning to go there, he created a misleading paper trail suggesting that his stay in Dallas was many hours after Kennedy’s shooting, rather than a few hours before.

In fact although he did travel from Tyler to Dallas, he stayed only briefly, did not stay at the Sheraton this time, and went right back to Houston. The Parrott call served no purpose besides manufacturing a reason to create a government record of his presence in Tyler and his plan to go to Dallas later on the 22^nd. Once Parrott had served, however unwittingly, his purpose, there was no reason for him to suffer – hence, Reynolds’s visit to Parrott’s house around the time of the assassination, which effectively created an alibi clearing Parrott. In other words, no harm done.

As for the reference to the Ulmers in Barbara’s letter, why risk introducing so controversial a person? Like Bush’s use of Joe Zeppa’s plane, it helped establish that Bush had in fact spent time with Al Ulmer. Better to include Ulmer’s wife’s name (but not his) and Zeppa’s name (misspelled) so that should a rare hardy investigator bother to figure out the sequence of events, Bush could claim that he obviously had nothing to hide – after all, there it was (in a way) in Barbara’s letter.

In fact, Poppy Bush had good reason to obfuscate the details of his relationships and his conduct because they would, at minimum, lead to further inquiry at a time when an investigation into the death of a president was or should have been – open-ended. The secrets themselves, and the urgency of keeping them hidden, would become a principal rationale in the family’s political efforts. And as we shall see, they go a long way toward explaining the unprecedented information lockdown and seeming paranoia of the George W. Bush administration – whose earliest acts included an effort to put his father’s records under lock and key forever.

• PART 1 of 3 (see part 2 and part 3 next two posts)
• Peter Dale Scott theorized in Deep Politics and the Death of JFK that the stock transactions of the major stockholders of LTV (Harold Byrd (owner TSBD), Troy Post (financier) and James Ling (businessman) engineer) were made with foreknowledge of the JFK assassination.
• Troy Post was co-owner of Coconut micro island in Hawaii with California oil man Edwin Pauley.
• JFK researcher Bruce Adamson acquired the 6 volume set of personal phone books George De Mohrenschildt and noted that De Mohrenschildt had listed Edwin Pauleys name an unusual 4 times. ( To note to avoid confusion ,per Adamson ,George de Mohrenschildt also worked for CBS head William S. Paley after call to Paley's private secretary) The phone books also listed GHWB and also GHWB's intimate nickname "POPPY" ,which few knew. In the appendix of the Secret War Against the Jews book George de Mohrenschildt had the post WWII office number of Allen Dulles at RCA. William Paley (CBS) and Allen Dulles were very,very close friends (see letters Paley - Dulles, Adamson). Prescott Bush (father of GHWB, was a CBS trustee for 30 years (from the radio days to the TV days)) also was a friend of Allen Dulles from the 1930s.
• Edwin Pauley ,as was William Casey, were private post WWII operatives of Allen Dulles per Secret War Against the Jews book. Casey and Pauley were , per the Gold Warriors book , were top operatives (with Edwin Lasndale) in the ultra secret post WWII Asian-Japanese stolen gold project that help fund post WWII anti-communist CIA operations. Edwin Lasndale was considered by Fetcher Prouty to be a Allen Dulles operative inside the Air Force.
• Dimitri Von Mohrenschildt (brother of George de Mohrenschildt ) wrote a book in the 1950s with the nephew of Allen Dulles.
• In 63 William Casey worked with Prescott Bush Jr. (brother GHWB) in a think tank advocating a stronger CIA and increased CIA covert operations.
• ==============================

• Jack Alston Crichton was born on a cotton plantation in Crichton, Louisiana, on 16th October, 1916. After leaving Byrd High School in Shreveport in 1933 he attended the Texas A&M University. Fellow students included Harvey Bright and Earle Cabell. He graduated with a degree in Petroleum Engineering in 1937.

  During the Second World War he served with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in Europe. In 1946 Everette DeGolyer recruited Crichton. According to Russ Baker: "He started and ran a baffling array of companies, which tended to change names frequently. These operated largely below the radar, and fronted for some of North America's biggest names, including the Bronfmans (Seagram's liquor), the Du Ponts, and the Kuhn-Loeb family of financiers."

  In 1952 Jack Crichton joined a syndicate that included Everette DeGolyer and Clint Murchison to use connections in the government of General Francisco Franco to acquire rare drilling rights in Spain. The operation was handled by Delta Drilling, which was owned by Joe Zeppa.

  In August 1953 Crichton joined the Empire Trust Company. He eventually became a vice-president of the organization. According to Stephen Birmingham, the author of Our Crowd: The Great Jewish Families of New York (1962) the company had a network of associates that amounted to "something very like a private CIA". The Empire Trust was also a major investor in the defence contractor General Dynamics.

  In 1956 Crichton started up his own spy unit, the 488th Military Intelligence Detachment. Crichton served as the unit's commander under Lieutenant Colonel George Whitmeyer, who was in overall command of all Army Reserve units in East Texas. In an interview Crichton claimed that there were "about a hundred men in that unit and about forty or fifty of them were from the Dallas Police Department."

  In the 1950s Jack Crichton became involved with several oil men who began negotiating with Fulgencio Batista, the military dictator of Cuba. A key figure in this was George de Mohrenschildt, who at that time worked for a company called Cuban-Venezuelan Oil Voting Trust Company (CVOVT) that had been established by William Buckley Sr. Crichton later remarked that "I liked George. He was a nice guy." It is argued by Russ Baker that Crichton's Empire Trust Company played a major role in the financing of the Cuban venture.

  On 30th November, 1956, The New York Times reported that: "The Cuban Stanolind Oil Company, an affiliate of the Standard Oil Company (Indiana), has signed an agreement with the Cuban-Venezuelan Oil Voting Trust and Trans-Cuba Oil Company for the development of an an additional 3,000,000 acres in Cuba. This is in addition to the original agreement covering 12,000,000 acres." George de Mohrenschildt later told Albert E. Jenner that CVOVT had managed to obtain leases covering nearly half of Cuba in the 1950s. As Russ Baker pointed out in Family of Secrets (2008): "Though now almost completely forgotten, on many days in the mid-1950s, it was one of the four or five most actively traded issues on the American Stock Exchange."

  On 1st January, 1959, Fulgencio Batista fled Cuba. The following day Fidel Castro and his revolutionary army marched into Havana. The New York Times reported on 22nd November 1959, that Castro's government had approved a law that would reduce the size of claims for oil exploration and halt large-scale explorations by private companies. These claims were now limited to 20,000 acres. This was a major problem for the Cuban-Venezuelan Oil Voting Trust Company that had signed an agreement with Fulgencio Batista for 15,000,000 acres.

  Jack Crichton also had a close association with George H. W. Bush. According to Fabian Escalante (The Secret War: CIA Covert Operations Against Cuba, 1959-62), in 1959, Crichton and Bush raised funds for the CIA's Operation 40. Originally it was set up to organize sabotage operations against Fidel Castro and his Cuban government. However, it evolved into a team of assassins. One member, Frank Sturgis, claimed: "this assassination group (Operation 40) would upon orders, naturally, assassinate either members of the military or the political parties of the foreign country that you were going to infiltrate, and if necessary some of your own members who were suspected of being foreign agents... We were concentrating strictly in Cuba at that particular time."

  The failure to assassinate or overthrow Fidel Castro caused tremendous problems for the Cuban-Venezuelan Oil Voting Trust Company and other foreign oil companies that had already invested more than $30 million looking for oil in Cuba. In December 1960, CVOVT was de-listed from the American Stock Exchange.

  Critchton was appointed head of the intelligence component of the Dallas Civil Defence. The conservative radio commentator Paul Harvey wrote in his syndicated column in September 1960: "The Communists, since 1917, have sold Communism to more people than have been told about Christ after 2,000 years." He urged his readers to support the "counter-attack that had been mounted in Dallas."

  In 1961 Crichton joined forces with other right-wing figures in Dallas to establish a program called "Know Your Enemy". This was to combat communist influence that "was undermining the American way of life". The following year Crichton opened an underground command post under the patio of the Dallas Health and Science Museum that was intended for "continuity-of-government" operations during a communist attack.

  In 1963 Crichton was nominated by the Republican Party for the post of Governor of Texas. He joined forces with George H. W. Bush, who was the nominee for the U.S. Senate. As Crichton later recalled, he and Bush "spoke from the same podiums" that year. However, Crichton was defeated by John Connally and he later wrote a book about his failed attempt to become governor, The Republican-Democrat Political Campaigns: In Texas in 1964.

  In November 1963 Crichton was involved in the arrangements of the visit that President John F. Kennedy made to Dallas. His close friend, Deputy Police Chief George L. Lumpkin, and a fellow member of the the 488th Military Intelligence Detachment, drove the pilot car of Kennedy's motorcade. Also in the car was Lieutenant Colonel George Whitmeyer, commander of all Army Reserve units in East Texas. The pilot car stopped briefly in front of the Texas School Book Depository, where Lumpkin spoke to a policeman controlling traffic at the corner of Houston and Elm.

  In the Warren Commission Report it stated that Crichton arranged for a member of the local Russian community, Ilya Mamantov, to work for the Dallas Police Department as a translator for Russian-born Marina Oswald shortly after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Crichton's volunteer translated for Oswald during her initial questioning by the Dallas authorities in the hours immediately after her husband Lee Harvey Oswald had been arrested. According to Russ Baker, the author of Family of Secrets (2009), there "were far from literal translations of her Russian words and had the effect of implicating her husband in Kennedy's death."

  Crichton was president of Nafco Oil and Gas. He also owned a company called Dorchester Gas Producing. A fellow director was David Harold Byrd who along with Clint Murchison, Haroldson L. Hunt and Sid Richardson, was part of the Big Oil group in Dallas. Barr McClellan (Blood, Money & Power) argues that "Big Oil would be during the fifties and into the sixties what the OPEC oil cartel was to the United States in the seventies and beyond". One of the main concerns of this group was the preservation of the oil depletion allowance.

  Jack Crichton who was President of the Dallas Petroleum Engineers Club, also served as a Director to Florida Gas Company, Clark Oil and Refining, Whitehall Corporation, Transco Energy and the Consolidated Development Corporation.

  Jack Alston Crichton died in Dallas on 10th December, 2007. (SPARTACUS EDUCATIONAL- Simkim)

• SEE JOE ZEPPA ABOVE AND NEXT POST