JFK and the Ku Klux Klan

[Terri Williams]

Thank you so much for the advice. In the past I have found it hard to get anything published, it's so incriminating. And I will not change a thing. I want the world to know the truth, not some Hollywood version of it.

All in all, there are at least three books worth of true stories I have to tell, all three jam packed with stuff investigators have not seen and again, ALL TRUE. I suppose I am getting old enough now. At one time I felt cursed for having witnessed so much, but now, I am glad to know what I know and I feel it should be shared, since it is true, not some flight of fantasy and because the events effected so many people.

To be fair to myself, I have written and published what I could where I could, on Facebook and blogs and such. I had written about my account of the day Kennedy was shot and posted it on Facebook, since it is true. Everyone has a story for that day; mine needed sharing, too. Someone on Facebook directed my attention to this site. Since everyone on this forum is wanting to know what happened, not just to John Kennedy, but Martin Luther King, Jr and Robert Kennedy, where else would there be a better place to state what I know. Those of you who are truly wanting to get to the bottom of things, I have told what I know for you.

Maybe one of you can find that link from Bannister to the green Ford pick-up truck. Or maybe someone else from Terry will speak up too, I hope. There are at least two people I know of who were there that day, still alive, who were, like me, not happy about what they were witnessing. There were others in town who were sad that day, but for the most part, the Klan ruled that day in Terry, Mississippi.

And if anyone seriously thinks that anyone in the Klan or who was in the Klan, is going to speak up, well, "you gotta be xxxxtin me man".

When I heard the news from Mr. MacDaniel, I just couldn't help it, my head hung low. One of the Klan kidz noticed and told me "Ha that's nuthin'! They're gonna keep goin' till there's a KKK". I think most people who were sad couldn't help their heads hanging low. The Klan took notice of who was and wasn't celebrating. They gloated whenever some of us were around. Their 'gloating' is usually taken as a threat in Terry.

I just checked the spelling of the principal's name in the 1964 Yellow Jacket, the school's yearbook, or annual. I kept that one and the 1965 Yellow Jacket. His name was R. W. McDaniel. I was a little confused about that, since at school, students referred to him as "Mr. Mac".

Edited January 24, 2013 by Terri Williams

[David Andrews]

IMHO, the most sellable parts here are the reminiscences of the racial climate in the south, plus the structure of the KKK groups. KKK interest in JFK's death could be used for the introduction and then elaborated on at the book's climax. You probably want to be structuring this as a memoir.

That's about as far as you can go with a mainstream publisher, who needs to get this book sold by mainstream retailers and reviewed in the mainstream media. If you bring in the California and Vancouver parts of your life - especially in a query letter to an agent - the project will die on the vine, or will only be accepted by some small press that specializes in serial killer/occult-type books.

If you ever start this as a mainstream publishing project, you will probably need to shut down your websites, since that's not the material you want to focus on or be judged on initially. The stuff here that's mainstreamable would, however, find a publisher and an audience. Just don't confuse buyers too early - give them a limited and definite topic to understand.

Edited January 24, 2013 by David Andrews

[Paul Trejo]

...

the KKK in the 1960's were also "training to invade Cuba.

Yes they were. Many who were training were young men and cousins of mine. They were furious when JFK confiscated their weapons. The white boys came to school ranting and raving about it. I don't know, but have been told by those who do know, that Dr ---- ------- ------- supplied some of the arms. He even had a training area on his property, but from what I heard back then, most of the training to invade Cuba was done in Louisiana. Not sure if it was a military operation at an army base or just back in the woods...

Terri, I'd like to get back to your account about young men and cousins of yours in Terry, Mississippi training to invade Cuba.

This was the number one central goal of the Minutemen organization under Robert DePugh in 1962-1963.

Jim Garrison says that Guy Banister, with his associates, Hugh Ward, David Ferrie and Gordon Novel, conducted a Minuteman training camp in Louisiana, in Saint Tammany Parish, near Lake Pontchartrain (which was a property owned by Carlos Marcello, as I recall). Banister was responsible for supplying the arms and ammunition for all this training. Minutemen and Cuban Exiles supplied the manpower.

In the summer of 1963, when Lee Harvey Oswald was in New Orleans (and offered to train the men of Carlos Bringuier) Gerry Patrick Hemming claimed that he saw Oswald at that training camp.

Also in the summer of 1963, JFK issued an order to close down all paramilitary training camps -- he was trying to broker a peace deal with the USSR, and all these paramilitary groups were not helping him. So, in obedience, the FBI (reluctantly) closed down the Lake Pontchartrain training camp, and confiscated all their weapons and munitions.

Now -- what you're saying, Terri, is that young men from your neighborhood were also "training to invade Cuba". My question to you is this -- do you remember the name and/or the location of the training camp in which young men from Terry, Mississippi would have gone to do this training? Any recollection here could be helpful.

Best regards,

--Paul Trejo

Edited January 26, 2013 by Paul Trejo

[Michael Hogan]

The year, 1963, closed on a somber note nationally, with the impact of President Kennedy's assassination still fresh in America's consciousness.

In many ways the assassination was to have particularly harmful effects on the Minutemen. Suddenly a political oriented organization that placed

cross hairs in the "O" of their official newsletter's masthead did not seem quite as quaint as it had before November 22.

To the Minutemen themselves, however, the immediate effect of the assassination seemed more of a nuisance than anything else. Looking back at it

three years later, DePugh observed: "Here you had a man you could say anything about and get away with it, and he's suddenly turned into a national hero

that you don't dare say anything about without people taking offense at, " DePugh said. "We were really zeroing in on Kennedy at the time he was assassinated.

He was our number one whipping boy, so to speak....."

"It took a while before Johnson maneuvered himself into a postition where he became a legitimate target for adverse publicity. For quite a long while he rode along on John Kennedy's halo."

"So that (the assassination) was kind of a setback for us so far as our psy-war was concerned. All of our recruiting literature was written up and based

on the Communist infiltration of the Kennedy administration, and suddenly, the literature was of no value."

From J Harry Jones' seminal 1968 book The Minutemen.

[Terri Williams]

The year, 1963, closed on a somber note nationally, with the impact of President Kennedy's assassination still fresh in America's consciousness.

In many ways the assassination was to have particularly harmful effects on the Minutemen. Suddenly a political oriented organization that placed

cross hairs in the "O" of their official newsletter's masthead did not seem quite as quaint as it had before November 22.

...

the KKK in the 1960's were also "training to invade Cuba.

Yes they were. Many who were training were young men and cousins of mine. They were furious when JFK confiscated their weapons. The white boys came to school ranting and raving about it. I don't know, but have been told by those who do know, that Dr ---- ------- ------- supplied some of the arms. He even had a training area on his property, but from what I heard back then, most of the training to invade Cuba was done in Louisiana. Not sure if it was a military operation at an army base or just back in the woods...

Terri, I'd like to get back to your account about young men and cousins of yours in Terry, Mississippi training to invade Cuba.

This was the number one central goal of the Minutemen organization under Robert DePugh in 1962-1963.

Jim Garrison says that Guy Banister, with his associates, Hugh Ward, David Ferrie and Gordon Novel, conducted a Minuteman training camp in Louisiana, in Saint Tammany Parish, near Lake Pontchartrain (which was a property owned by Carlos Marcello, as I recall). Banister was responsible for supplying the arms and ammunition for all this training. Minutemen and Cuban Exiles supplied the manpower.

In the summer of 1963, when Lee Harvey Oswald was in New Orleans (and offered to train the men of Carlos Bringuier) Gerry Patrick Hemming claimed that he saw Oswald at that training camp.

Also in the summer of 1963, JFK issued an order to close down all paramilitary training camps -- he was trying to broker a peace deal with the USSR, and all these paramilitary groups were not helping him. So, in obedience, the FBI (reluctantly) closed down the Lake Pontchartrain training camp, and confiscated all their weapons and munitions.

Now -- what you're saying, Terri, is that young men from your neighborhood were also "training to invade Cuba". My question to you is this -- do you remember the name and/or the location of the training camp in which young men from Terry, Mississippi would have gone to do this training? Any recollection here could be helpful.

Best regards,

--Paul Trejo

To the Minutemen themselves, however, the immediate effect of the assassination seemed more of a nuisance than anything else. Looking back at it

three years later, DePugh observed: "Here you had a man you could say anything about and get away with it, and he's suddenly turned into a national hero

that you don't dare say anything about without people taking offense at, " DePugh said. "We were really zeroing in on Kennedy at the time he was assassinated.

He was our number one whipping boy, so to speak....."

"It took a while before Johnson maneuvered himself into a postition where he became a legitimate target for adverse publicity. For quite a long while he rode along on John Kennedy's halo."

"So that (the assassination) was kind of a setback for us so far as our psy-war was concerned. All of our recruiting literature was written up and based

on the Communist infiltration of the Kennedy administration, and suddenly, the literature was of no value."

From J Harry Jones' seminal 1968 book The Minutemen.

Well, from what my cousins told me, as well as gossip in town about the "invasion-trainging", all any of them would have told me is that there was training going on in Louisiana. They did not mention where exactly, although I got the impression that they were training in the woods. I knew my cousins were part of the training; they were proud of the fact. I cannot tell you where.

As to Bannister supplying the arms, it was my understanding that Doc helped in that regard. As well as some of the sniper training would have been carried out on Doc's property.

Edited January 26, 2013 by Terri Williams

[Paul Trejo]

The year, 1963, closed on a somber note nationally, with the impact of President Kennedy's assassination still fresh in America's consciousness.

In many ways the assassination was to have particularly harmful effects on the Minutemen. Suddenly a political oriented organization that placed cross hairs in the "O" of their official newsletter's masthead did not seem quite as quaint as it had before November 22.

To the Minutemen themselves, however, the immediate effect of the assassination seemed more of a nuisance than anything else. Looking back at it three years later, DePugh observed: "Here you had a man you could say anything about and get away with it, and he's suddenly turned into a national hero that you don't dare say anything about without people taking offense at, "

DePugh said. "We were really zeroing in on Kennedy at the time he was assassinated. He was our number one whipping boy, so to speak....."

"It took a while before Johnson maneuvered himself into a postition where he became a legitimate target for adverse publicity. For quite a long while he rode along on John Kennedy's halo."

"So that (the assassination) was kind of a setback for us so far as our psy-war was concerned. All of our recruiting literature was written up and based on the Communist infiltration of the Kennedy administration, and suddenly, the literature was of no value."

From J Harry Jones' seminal 1968 book The Minutemen.

Michael, this quotation from Jones', The Minutemen (1968) would be useful in making a case that the Minutemen would take no part in the assassination of JFK. In fact, it would have been contrary to their wishes to have JFK eliminated, claimed DePugh, because JFK was useful to them as a "whipping boy."

Their incessant propaganda about paramilitary force as necessary to defend the USA from its own (allegedly) Communist leaders was supposed to have no impact, according to DePugh -- and the cross-hairs of a rifle's telescopic sight which formed part of their logo was only a clever and "quaint" marketing ploy.

The JFK assassination removed this radical, paramilitary group's "whipping boy," and this moved DePugh to bemoan the loss of JFK because the Minutemen were "really zeroing in on Kennedy at the time he was assassinated."

Yet that statement is rich with ambiguity.

I'm willing to admit that the JFK assassination might be interpreted as a "setback" for the Minutemen because all their literature that painted JFK as a Communist suddenly became useless. But another way to interpret that situation is that the JFK assassination made the Minutemen propaganda useless simply because it fulfilled the MInutemen propaganda.

A deeper criticism of DePugh's statement is that it tends to suggest that the Minutemen formed a centralized organization that marched to the orders of Robert DePugh. The real nature of the Minutemen, as told by eye-witnesses like Harry Dean, is that they were decidedly decentralized. Each State in the USA had its own Minutemen -- and in larger States each region had its own Minutemen organization.

No central file cabinet of membership for all of the thousands of interstate Minutemen members was ever found (although the FBI once found a list of a few hundred in the trash of one local organization). We really don't even know the exact number of Minutemen who marched State by State.

The loyalties of the Minutemen tended to be directed to their local leaders, rather than to their national headquarters. There was plenty of independence and individualism among the Minutemen groups. The Southern California Minutemen were different in character from the Minnesota Minutemen, for example.

Finally, nobody, to my knowledge, has ever accused Robert DePugh personally of involvement in the JFK assassination. Such suspects tend to be local members of the Minutemen, rather than the centralized Minutemen organization.

For example, the young Jack Martin who served under ex-General Edwin Walker in Augsburg, Germany in 1960, and who in the summer of 1963 filmed the bullet holes in Walker's window sill and wall with his home movie camera, and with the same film also captured the scene of Lee Harvey Oswald being arrested by police after fighting with Carlos Bringuier -- this young Jack Martin was a member of the Minnesota Minutemen.

Also, Guy Banister was reportedly a member of the New Orleans Minutemen. Also, Edwin Walker was reportedly a member of the Dallas Minutemen.

We must rely on eye-witnesses for information regarding this period -- for example, Harry Dean, who attended training camps of the Southern California Minutemen in 1962-1963, tells us that the assassination of JFK was a continual topic of discussion in those camps. Yet this was no centralized plot -- it was never explicitly described in the pages of the Minuteman journal. It was simply in the air.

It was the spirit of the Minutemen, rather than their organization, that radicalized already radical individuals with propaganda that Communists had infiltrated the White House, and that the fall of Cuba was proof, and that "the only way of removing the traitors from office was by shooting them out."

On a separate note, it is significant that Harry Dean also reports that he witnessed no KKK propaganda at all while he was in the Southern California Minutemen.

Yet if Terri's young cousins and neighbors from the KKK had indeed been training with the New Orleans Minutemen in the summer of 1963, and if KKK propaganda was also avoided in that camp, this would suggest that the KKK were not the leaders, but were guests who were following orders from others -- perhaps from somebody like Guy Banister.

Best regards,

--Paul Trejo

<edit typos>

Edited January 26, 2013 by Paul Trejo

[Terri Williams]

IMHO, the most sellable parts here are the reminiscences of the racial climate in the south, plus the structure of the KKK groups. KKK interest in JFK's death could be used for the introduction and then elaborated on at the book's climax. You probably want to be structuring this as a memoir.

That's about as far as you can go with a mainstream publisher, who needs to get this book sold by mainstream retailers and reviewed in the mainstream media. If you bring in the California and Vancouver parts of your life - especially in a query letter to an agent - the project will die on the vine, or will only be accepted by some small press that specializes in serial killer/occult-type books.

If you ever start this as a mainstream publishing project, you will probably need to shut down your websites, since that's not the material you want to focus on or be judged on initially. The stuff here that's mainstreamable would, however, find a publisher and an audience. Just don't confuse buyers too early - give them a limited and definite topic to understand.

Thank you. Yes I understand that all my accounts in life are a bit much for most folks. How could one person have come into contact with so much? Yet, I did. And I think you are right, to close down my blogs and such and focus only on this for a while. That's when books two, then three can be introduced.

I know how people see me. I am not stupid. If I had not been through all that I have been through I would not believe such stuff, either. But I have been, and I have stopped asking "Why me?"

The answer to that is, because "I will write only the truth of what happened and that I am able to write." That's what I figure is going on. But I understand the doubt, believe me. Living through it all has been quite overwhelming. I should have gone into law enforcement, I guess.

[Terri Williams]

Yet if Terri's young cousins and neighbors from the KKK had indeed been training with the New OrleansMinutemen in the summer of 1963, and if KKK propaganda was also avoided in that camp, this would suggest that the KKK were not the leaders, but were guests who were following orders from others -- perhaps from somebody like Guy Banister.

Yes, that's sounds about right to me. Not sure how Doc was connected in the "giving orders", but he helped in the supply end. As well as having the space for target practice, from what I heard.

Edited January 26, 2013 by Terri Williams

[Terri Williams]

We must rely on eye-witnesses for information regarding this period -- for example, Harry Dean, who attended training camps of the Southern California Minutemen in 1962-1963, tells us that the assassination of JFK was a continual topic of discussion in those camps. Yet this was no centralized plot -- it was never explicitly described in the pages of the Minuteman journal. It was simply in the air.

Oh yes, it was in the air thick as molasses in the summer of '63. It was after the confiscation of weapons that talk turned from invading Cuba to the death of JFK and how "dare he leave us so defenceless, "What is he up ta?".

I suspect it also left a sizeable dent in someone's inheritance money as well. People kill over stuff like that.

Edited January 26, 2013 by Terri Williams

[Michael Hogan]

The year, 1963, closed on a somber note nationally, with the impact of President Kennedy's assassination still fresh in America's consciousness.

In many ways the assassination was to have particularly harmful effects on the Minutemen. Suddenly a political oriented organization that placed cross hairs in the "O" of their official newsletter's masthead did not seem quite as quaint as it had before November 22.

To the Minutemen themselves, however, the immediate effect of the assassination seemed more of a nuisance than anything else. Looking back at it three years later, DePugh observed: "Here you had a man you could say anything about and get away with it, and he's suddenly turned into a national hero that you don't dare say anything about without people taking offense at, "

DePugh said. "We were really zeroing in on Kennedy at the time he was assassinated. He was our number one whipping boy, so to speak....."

"It took a while before Johnson maneuvered himself into a postition where he became a legitimate target for adverse publicity. For quite a long while he rode along on John Kennedy's halo."

"So that (the assassination) was kind of a setback for us so far as our psy-war was concerned. All of our recruiting literature was written up and based on the Communist infiltration of the Kennedy administration, and suddenly, the literature was of no value."

From J Harry Jones' seminal 1968 book The Minutemen.

Michael, this quotation from Jones', The Minutemen (1968) would be useful in making a case that the Minutemen would take no part in the assassination of JFK. In fact, it would have been contrary to their wishes to have JFK eliminated, claimed DePugh, because JFK was useful to them as a "whipping boy."

Just to be clear, I was not trying to make any case with my post; that is why it was posted with no comment. Each reader can make of it what they will.

Paul, have you read Jones' book?

Edited to add:

A deeper criticism of DePugh's statement is that it tends to suggest that the Minutemen formed a centralized organization that marched to the orders of Robert DePugh.

This (invading Cuba) was the number one central goal of the Minutemen organization under Robert DePugh in 1962-1963.

Edited January 27, 2013 by Michael Hogan

[Paul Trejo]

...Paul, have you read Jones' book?

Yes, Michael, I read The Minutemen (1968) by J. Harry Jones Jr. last year while studying the Cold War under Dr. H.W. Brands at UT Austin. As a side-note, it was republished in 1969 under the title, A Private Army.

Jones interviewed Robert DePugh at length, and I got the impression that DePugh was an ordindary bloke - nothing very special about him intellectually or ethically. He was a man of action, like his buddies. They were hunters, liked military games, and they believed the McCarthyist and John Bircher nonsense about Communists taking over Washington D.C.

They felt justified in their mood during the Cuban Crisis. From my reading of Jones' book, the psychology of the Minutemen founders can be approximately observed by watching the 1984 movie, Red Dawn, starring Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen.

Robert DePugh continually conveyed to Jones his constant fear -- his paranoia IMHO -- that Castro's Cubans were going to invade the USA because the White House allowed this to happen.

That is the fantasy that is portrayed in Red Dawn, which shows a country high school team (the Wolverines) using their hunting rifles to heroically defeat the Cuban Army as it invaded their home town. I think this captures well the DePugh mentality as portrayed in Jones' scholarly work.

Best regards,

--Paul Trejo

Edited January 27, 2013 by Paul Trejo

[Mark Knight]

Paul, I think all this dovetails quite nicely with your primary theory about the motivations behind the WC Report. If JFK--whom the Minutemen considered a Communist--was killed by an alleged Communist, as the Warren Commission decided, then their predicted "revolution" against JFK and the Communists was defused, and a civil war was averted. But by finding that the alleged Communist assassin had no connections to Castro, those who would have had us invading Cuba and tempting Russia to get involved in what surely would have been World War III was also averted.

So for the sake of "national security," the official story was that JFK was assassinated by an alleged Communist, but by one not aligned with any Communist nation. And for those reasons, the truth was to be buried for 75 years...at which time all the principals would surely be dead.

Adding in the Mafia and KKK to the mix may also have been intentional...just to sidetrack those who might have decided that the WC Report stunk to high heaven, and put them off on false trails...wasting precious time and energy that might otherwise have discovered the truth.

Don't get me wrong...I believe that the KKK may well have been involved in the training camps. But I think their inclusion had a purpose far beyond just getting some sharp-shooting country boys to take out Castro...or JFK. I think that the involvement of the KKK was to muddy the waters regarding just who was behind the assassination...which I think was at least being discussed in some quarters since the Bay of Pigs.

Edited January 27, 2013 by Mark Knight

[Paul Trejo]

...Adding in the Mafia and KKK to the mix may also have been intentional...just to sidetrack those who might have decided that the WC Report stunk to high heaven, and put them off on false trails...wasting precious time and energy that might otherwise have discovered the truth....

Mark, I will agree this far -- when the HSCA under Robert Blakey spent enormous sums of taxpayer money from 1977-1979 to mainly track the anemic theory that the Mafia killed JFK, this was done deliberately.

I believe the USA National Security rationale for locking up the Lee Harvey Oswald files was still in effect in 1977, therefore it was still too early to unlock the Oswald files (because the Cold War and the USSR were still going strong at that time) and so Robert Blakey was positioned to waste everybody's time with a Mafia melodrama.

Now that the USSR is dead and gone, I suspect that the National Security rationale may no longer apply to the issue of unlocking the Oswald files. That is, if it's only an abstract problem of keeping the left-wing and right-wing from fighting, well, another 25 years will make no difference -- the left and right wings have fought for many centuries, and will continue to fight for another century at least. So, I don't think that's the rationale. The USSR was the real National Security reason for keeping Oswald's files secret, IMHO. Now that the USSR is gone, lets ask President Obama to release the Oswald files or tell us why.

As for the KKK, I believe they are less relevant to US history today than at any time since the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. That said, the possible KKK participation with Guy Banister in Louisiana might supply empirical evidence (and eye-witnesses) to flesh out the US history of the Cold War and its JFK assassination. At least I hope so.

Best regards,

--Paul Trejo

<edit typos>

Edited January 27, 2013 by Paul Trejo

[John Dolva]

In his foreword to the last investigation Fonzi mentions that all groups that had benn assigned to look at various hypothesis came up with supporting evidence. Still, he foused on one, Blakey on another and others on others. The one that has had least serious attention, in fact just about all lists exclude Civil Rights as an issue, and therefore necessarily the KKK and its ilk. Until recently.

The KKK was not added tp the mix in any way as all the other usuals were. Except in the first few moments. Then the sleights of hand started. It's only recently that a number have found reason to return to those earliest times and view the same data plus much else that has been gathering dust for decades with a new perspective and I think things are becoming clearer on many levels. It's hard to accept that entities inside of 'normal' society were responsible. It's so much easier to accept a perspective that blames some relatively alien grouping. Greasy tomato merchants, cranky latinos, commies et.c. .

Sometimes the conspiracy hypothesist is the conspirators best friend.

"when after all it was you and me" - Sympathy for the Devil - Beggars Banquet - Rolling Stones.

edit typos

Edited January 28, 2013 by John Dolva

[Terri Williams]

It's hard to accept that entities inside of 'normal' society were responsible.

The men I claim are the ones who carried out this plot, are not what normal society is, I hope. Although the way times have progressed, and given all the gun toting Americans who shoot people, maybe they are.

Many Americans believe that 911 was a terrorist attack. What I witnessed the Klan do was terrorism, so it is not something that is new to the USA. Personally I find it hard to believe the FBI were not involved in 911 because of the way they ignored so many good leads and tips. I also feel the FBI know a lot more about JFK's assassination than they have told. AND I feel that Hoover knew Doc, although I have no proof.

Truly I have not investigated this topic very much. I did see the movie JFK. I was struck by the info that Bannister traveled in a Sesna (like the one my pilot cousin flew while doing crop dusting), toward a point due north of New Orleans. Terry/Byram is nearly due north of New Orleans. I have always found it curious that people rarely connect Kennedy King Kennedy to the KKK, just like that Klan kid said, just before she congratulated the killer's son.

Also in that film, there was a character named 'Clay Shaw' or 'Bernard Shaw'. Does anyone on this forum, know if 'Clay/Bernard Shaw' was a fictional name? I have often wondered if 'Clay Shaw' is the name created for Doc.

The South I grew up in was full of fear. Fear of what the Cubans might do, fear of what would happen if schools and public places were integrated, fear of what would happen if blacks finally voted, not to mention the organic fear blacks had of the KKK. Black people were driven by hope, in the midst of fear, while white people were driven by the anger their fears provoked.

When a country lives so much in fear, it is difficult for peace to get a foot hold.

Edited January 27, 2013 by Terri Williams