Michael Ewing

[John Simkin]

I have received this email about Michael Ewing. Can any member help on this matter.

Hope you will not mind taking the trouble to answer a question about a former journalist colleague who died last year.

Is Michael Ewing, who co-wrote the conspiracy book on the kennedy assassination with Bernard Fensterwald, and also the JFK documents at the National Archives:Agency Record Number (HSCA) 11210419 and Agency File 015106 with Peter Kross, the English journalist and author who is the subject of this obituary from the Hartsville Messanger or are they in fact three different people and if so do you know who the other two are.

MICHAEL EWING

NORFOLK, England — Michael Ewing, 73, newspaper journalist, war correspondent and novelist, died peacefully at his home in San Miguel on Sept. 16, 2007.

Mr. Ewing, who lived in Hartsville for 10 years and taught at Coker College, was born in Norfolk, England, and served his country during the Korean War. Afterwards he returned to Norfolk and joined the Norfolk Chronicle, followed by the Peterborough Advertiser and the magazine, Angling Times, before he began writing for the London Daily Mirror in 1961. At the Daily Mirror, he worked for the legendary showbiz correspondent Rex North, before winning Granada TV’s “What The Papers Say” Column of the Year Award as editor of the “The Inside Page” in 1967. A year later, he was editing the Mirror’s high respected, “Mirrorscope” pages which broke new ground in the field of investigative journalism.

In the early 1970s he moved to the London Daily Express as assistant editor before leaving England to live on his boat based in the Languedoc region of France. He wrote five novels under the pseudonym Frank Ross. He also wrote novels under pseudonyms David Frasier and Blair Stuart. Mr. Ewing wrote under his own name for the Time-Life Books Vietnam services, “The Illustrated History of the Battle of Khe Sahn.” He was above all remembered by his friends and family “as an elegant, articulate and charming man.”

He is sadly missed by his wife, Louse Ewing; sons, Mark and Jonathan Ewing; four grandchildren and his many friends.

A memorial service is planned for November. The day, time and location of the services will be announced at a later date.

Memorials may be made to a charity of one’s choice.

[William Kelly]

I have received this email about Michael Ewing. Can any member help on this matter.

Hope you will not mind taking the trouble to answer a question about a former journalist colleague who died last year.

Is Michael Ewing, who co-wrote the conspiracy book on the kennedy assassination with Bernard Fensterwald, and also the JFK documents at the National Archives:Agency Record Number (HSCA) 11210419 and Agency File 015106 with Peter Kross, the English journalist and author who is the subject of this obituary from the Hartsville Messanger or are they in fact three different people and if so do you know who the other two are.

MICHAEL EWING

NORFOLK, England — Michael Ewing, 73, newspaper journalist, war correspondent and novelist, died peacefully at his home in San Miguel on Sept. 16, 2007.

Mr. Ewing, who lived in Hartsville for 10 years and taught at Coker College, was born in Norfolk, England, and served his country during the Korean War. Afterwards he returned to Norfolk and joined the Norfolk Chronicle, followed by the Peterborough Advertiser and the magazine, Angling Times, before he began writing for the London Daily Mirror in 1961. At the Daily Mirror, he worked for the legendary showbiz correspondent Rex North, before winning Granada TV's "What The Papers Say" Column of the Year Award as editor of the "The Inside Page" in 1967. A year later, he was editing the Mirror's high respected, "Mirrorscope" pages which broke new ground in the field of investigative journalism.

In the early 1970s he moved to the London Daily Express as assistant editor before leaving England to live on his boat based in the Languedoc region of France. He wrote five novels under the pseudonym Frank Ross. He also wrote novels under pseudonyms David Frasier and Blair Stuart. Mr. Ewing wrote under his own name for the Time-Life Books Vietnam services, "The Illustrated History of the Battle of Khe Sahn." He was above all remembered by his friends and family "as an elegant, articulate and charming man."

He is sadly missed by his wife, Louse Ewing; sons, Mark and Jonathan Ewing; four grandchildren and his many friends.

A memorial service is planned for November. The day, time and location of the services will be announced at a later date.

Memorials may be made to a charity of one's choice.

The above obit is not Michael Ewing, the American researcher and writer and staff member of the House Select Committee on Assassinations and co-author of Coincidence or Conspiracy?, with Bud Festerwald. I think he also wrote a book with G. Robert Blakey.

The Coincidence or Conspiracy? paperback is quite good, and does dosier profiles of various characters involved in the assassination drama.

I don't know what became of Michael Ewing, but I have a story about him that I'll relate sometime. The phone number I had for him stopped working years ago, but he was a pretty young guy when he worked with Blakey.

I would think that G. Robert Blakey would know what became of him.

Peter Kross, I think, is a North New Jersey historian, journalist and editor of Backchannels Magazine.

Am I missing something?

Bill Kelly

[J. Raymond Carroll]

I don't know what became of Michael Ewing, but I have a story about him that I'll relate sometime.

Ewing was last in the news as Seymour Hersh's collaborator on the Dark Side of Camelot. As I recall the story, Hersh got $1 Million to write a book on the JFK assassination, then he met Ewing, who apparently persuaded Hersh & his publishers (Little Brown &Co) that they could make more money with a book assassinating JFK's character. This led Hersh to what was the most profitable forgery in history, the JFK/Marilyn Monroe letters which a gentleman named Cusack was selling to gullible collectors at up to $6 Million a pop.

The most complete telling of Ewing's involvement (that I know of) is in the November 1997 Vanity Fair article by Robert Sam Anson. I could not find that article online, but it is referred to here:

http://dir.salon.com/story/media/circus/1997/10/13/hersh/

At that time Ewing was a resident of Iowa, and is almost certainly NOT the person described by John Simkin's correspondent.

[William Kelly]

When Peter Noyes' book Legacy of Doubt (Pinacle paperback, 197?) came out, focusing on Jim Braden, and how he was taken into custody as a suspicious person leaving the Dal Tex building shortly after the assassination, Noyes makes a lot of the fact that Braden had changed his name shortly before taking his trip to Texas.

Under his old name, Eugene Hale Brading, he was arrested numerous times for various things, most notably for selling black market gas coupons in Florida during World War II, and as a material witness in the gambling case of Dominic Mattia in Camden, New Jersey in 1948.

In his book Noyes wrote that he contacted the Camden PD and asked for a copy of Braden's arrest report from 1948 but that he got no response, but since Camden was notorious for being under the control of organized crime, there was certainly a coverup.

When I showed that passage to my father, a Camden police lieutenant at the time, he obtained the original 4 page arrest report, including mug shot of Braden, and gave it to me, saying that it was in the back of the dirty and dingy basement at city hall and the secretaries who got Noyes' letter said they just didn't want to go down there. So much for organized crime control of Camden PD.

So I made a half dozen copies of the 1948 report, and then looked up Dominic Mattia in the phone book and found him in Cherry Hill. I went out to Mattia's house and knocked on the door and asked him about the arrest report with Braden. Mattia said he was playing cards in the backroom of a business in Camden when they were raided by vice cops. He didn't know Braden at the time, but since he was from out of town they took him in as a material witness and booked him. And Mattia hadn't seen Braden since.

Mattia was later arrested in a pretty complicated rackettering scheme, so I'm pretty sure he was a low level mobster of some sort, but I believe him about his interaction with Braden at the time.

I made a half dozen copies of Braden's Camden arrest report and sent them out to Peter Noyes in California, John Judge and Jim Lesar in Washington, Bill Turner and a few others who had expressed interest.

Not long there after, Congress established the House Select Committee on Assasinations (HSCA) and former Philadelphia prosecutor Richard Sprague was appointed chief counsel. I read the book about Sprague's prosecution of Mine Workers boss Tony Boyle for the political assassination of his rival Jock Yablonski, so I had high hopes that Sprague would make a difference.

When I read in the papers that Sprague had ordered his staff to read a number of conspiracy books, including Noyes' Legacy of Doubt, I put a copy of Braden's 1948 Camden arrest report in an envelop and personally delivered it to Sprague's office in Philadelphia.

Then Sprague got sacked and G. Robert Blakey, the law professor from Cornell (Now Notre Dame) and author of the RICO statutes, replaced him as chief counsel to HSCA.

Blakey of course, revamped the investigation, steered it towards organized crime, and after they issued the HSCA Final Report, wrote a book with Billings on how the mob killed Kennedy, using as evidence the Jim Braden connection.

The HSCA had interviewed Braden twice in executive sessions but then Blakey declared that since all of the HSCA records were Congressional Records, they were locked away for 50 years (from 1978).

It was at that time, after the HSCA disbanded and their records were locked away, that I got a phone call from Michael Ewing at my home in Ocean City, NJ.

I recognzied Ewing from the Coincidence or Conspiracy? book and for being a HSCA staff member, and assistant to Blakey in writing his mob killed JFK book.

Ewing said that Blakey had just learned from Peter Noyes that I had obtained Jim Braden's 1948 Camden arrest report, and he and Blakey wanted to know if they could have a copy?

I explained to Ewing that I had give a copy to Sprague, Blakey's predecissor at the HSCA, and Ewing said that when Sprague left he took his papers with him and apparently didn't leave what I had given him.

I told Ewing that I was glad that Sprague didn't leave it behind because if he did it would be locked away for 50 years.

In any case, I sent Ewing and Blakey a copy of the report and expressed my feelings that they were wrong to try to pin the assassination on the mob, but they could have it as ammunition anyway.

Ewing then corresponded with me a few times, and I had his phone number, but a few years later, when I wanted to contact him, the number no longer worked.

The original guy, who asked John to post his questions about Ewing, implies that the Michael Ewing he knew may have had CIA connections.

I don't think Ewing was CIA.

That's my Michael Ewing story.

Camden mug shot:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/CRIbraden1.htm

Nor do I think Jim Braden was a Dal Tex shooter, as he was never arrested for any violent crime ever. He was a racketter and con artists, not an assassin. He's also still alive today, and if anybody can find him I'd like to talk to him.

Bill Kelly

Edited May 16, 2008 by William Kelly

[William Kelly]

I sent off an email to G.R. Blakey and asked him. His response:

I am sorry. Mike and I have not kept up with each other. I haven't

heard from him in years. I don't know either where you can find information on

him. The last I heard he was writing a book on the assassination. I've not seen

it yet. - GRB

BK

[John Simkin]

Email received:

Michael and Phyllis Hughes Ewing

1068 Woodland Park Drive

West Des Moines, IA 50266

Phyllis is the youngest daughter of the late Senator Howard Hughes from Iowa, who gave a nomination for Gene McCarthy at the '68 Chicago Democratic convention. She was active in the Joe Biden for President campaign last fall.

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

Sidenote on Hughes: He was the coauthor of Hughes-Ryan, an amendment that the CIA did not enjoy. The Ryan is the SF congressman who ended up shot to death by citizens looking like glazed over zombies ( or former Clinton Staffers now analyzing for CNN?) on the Tarmac by the famous distributor of off-brand Kool-aid ( not the General Foods is innocent of everything!) the relatively good Rev. Jim Jones.

I remember Hughes being on a hit-list of targetted (more figuratively than in Jonestown) Senators during the 1980 campaign. That list included Sen Frank Church. Oh well at least they didnt tarmac his reputation. Anyone else remember who else was targeted in 1980, the last Great Turning?

[William Kelly]

Sidenote on Hughes: He was the coauthor of Hughes-Ryan, an amendment that the CIA did not enjoy. The Ryan is the SF congressman who ended up shot to death by citizens looking like glazed over zombies ( or former Clinton Staffers now analyzing for CNN?) on the Tarmac by the famous distributor of off-brand Kool-aid ( not the General Foods is innocent of everything!) the relatively good Rev. Jim Jones.

I remember Hughes being on a hit-list of targetted (more figuratively than in Jonestown) Senators during the 1980 campaign. That list included Sen Frank Church. Oh well at least they didnt tarmac his reputation. Anyone else remember who else was targeted in 1980, the last Great Turning?

Now wait a minute. Maybe I'm wrong, but didn't Ted Kennedy run for president that year, 1980? Or is that just a mistimed flashback? Excuse me.

BK

[William Kelly]

Email received:

Michael and Phyllis Hughes Ewing

1068 Woodland Park Drive

West Des Moines, IA 50266

Phyllis is the youngest daughter of the late Senator Howard Hughes from Iowa, who gave a nomination for Gene McCarthy at the '68 Chicago Democratic convention. She was active in the Joe Biden for President campaign last fall.

If anyone verafies this address is for real, I'd also like to get some contact phone numbers and email for Michael Ewing.

BK