The Ultimate USAEC secrets per the JFK hit.

[Thomas Graves]

It's just all interconnected, isn't it Steven?

--Tommy

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http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=13941&p=173751

http://books.google....the cia&f=false

Oswald and the CIA: the documented truth about the unknown ... - Page 278

John Newman - 2008 - 669 pages - Preview

In a recent interview, Mr. Anikeeff acknowledged not only his close and continuous friendship with George deMohrenschildt... Who was Nicholas Anikeeff? During the early 1950s, when the CIA dispatched two groups of Lithuanian infiltrators into Poland, ...

Nicholas Anikeeff ?......yes Tommy it is !!!!!

Well then, maybe Anikeeff was the mole Angleton was looking for....

--Tommy

[Paul Trejo]

It's just all interconnected, isn't it Steven?

--Tommy

Yes it is Tommy.

The trouble with it "all being interconnected," folks, is that it becomes chaotic, like a spaghetti-vegetable soup.

Everybody is a suspect -- including their parents and in-laws, their children and their adopted children.

It's fruitless, yet we're plagued with conspiracy thinkers who take their cues from the John Birch Society (e.g. the CFR, the Bilderbergers, and the Trilateral Commission are undermining the USA via the Federal Reserve Bank -- yes, that argument is also a half-century old, first taught by the JBS). Other conspiracists won't let go of their Nazi paranoia 70 years after the Fall of the Third Reich.

Yet as Jim Garrison said -- this is a murder case -- pure and simple.

When he started out, Jim Garrison didn't claim that the CIA killed JFK -- he claimed that some right-wing knuckleheads killed JFK -- and he could name some of them -- Guy Banister, David Ferrie, Clay Shaw, Jack S. Martin, Fred Crisman and Thomas Edward Beckley.

It was only after Jim Garrison hit the brick wall of FBI resistance to his case against Clay Shaw that Jim Garrison finally threw up his hands in despair, and realized he was out-numbered.

But instead of blaming the FBI (perhaps because Jim Garrison was once an FBI agent) Jim Garrison ended by blaming the CIA. But that was the end-game for Garrison -- not the starting point.

I say that Jim Garrison was closer to solving the JFK murder nearer to the start of his investigation. Why did we stop our focus on the New Orleans ground-crew? Just because there is not one single CIA Officer in the bunch?

It's time to get back to Jim Garrison's early case work. And remember -- Jim Garrison began by reading all 26 volumes of the Warren Commission's report.

Best regards,

--Paul Trejo

Edited September 10, 2014 by Paul Trejo

[Steven Gaal]

de Mohrenschildt's and his brother knew 50 CIA agents, consultants and operatives. De Mohrenschildt's father-in-law, Samuel Walter Washington was in charge of more than 250 CIA agents 1950-53. (Bruce Adamson)

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Bush and the JFK Hit, Part 9: Planning a Nightmare on Elm

By Russ Baker on Nov 13, 2013

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 ninth 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 9 come from Chapter 6 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; Part 4, here; Part 5, here; Part 6, here; Part 7, here; Part 8, here.

The Potomac Two-Step

De Mohrenschildt had just spent the last half year in almost constant contact with Lee Harvey Oswald, who had recently returned from several years in Soviet Russia. De Mohrenschildt had done so, moreover, at the CIA’s request, or so he claimed. It seems unlikely that the sole topic of the New York meeting with WUBRINY/1 would have been sisal in Haiti. Nevertheless, in the minds of these people, sisal was apparently enough to hang a legend on.

Now there was a documented and apparently benign reason that Thomas Devine (and by implication, Devine’s longtime associate George H. W. Bush) knew a man about to be under fierce scrutiny for his own ties to the alleged killer of the president of the United States.

In case the “sisal” document of April 1963 was not enough, de Mohrenschildt next traveled to Washington, DC where he and his friend Mr. Charles met with other government figures, ostensibly to talk about sisal.

Here the story gains a more intriguing layer – namely, the suggestion that de Mohrenschildt’s real purpose was to secure U.S. government backing for a coup d’état against the Haitian dictator François “Papa Doc” Duvalier. De Mohrenschildt and Charles appear to have obtained an audience with none other than Howard Burris, military adviser to Vice President Lyndon Johnson, with the prospect of meeting LBJ himself.

As noted in correspondence dated April 18, 1963:

Dear Mr. Mohrenschildt:

Your letter has come in the Vice President’s absence from the office . . . I would like to suggest that you see Colonel Howard Burris, Air Force Aide to the Vice President, when you come to Washington. Should Mr. Johnson happen to have any office hours here during our stay, we will be happy to see if a mutually convenient time can be found for you to meet . . . With warm wishes, Sincerely, Walter Jenkins, Administrative Assistant to the Vice President.

The Haitian coup therefore could have been intended as the operative story to explain why Oswald’s mentor de Mohrenschildt was interacting with powerful U.S. government figures in the period prior to the JFK assassination. The new story was introduced in 1978 testimony to the House Select Committee on Assassinations.

The witness was Dorothe Matlack, assistant director of the Army Office of Intelligence, who explained that she had also met with de Mohrenschildt and that he raised the idea of the U.S. government playing a role in the coup. “I knew the Texan [de Mohrenschildt] wasn’t there to sell hemp,” Matlack said.

This story would have been a clever one, since indeed an examination of de Mohrenschildt’s past, as noted earlier, shows him periodically in the environs of unfolding coups. Yet Matlack’s testimony served still another purpose – besides justifying de Mohrenschildt’s presence in meetings with LBJ’s adviser and with a CIA operative tied to Poppy Bush, it also justified any ties that would emerge between de Mohrenschildt and Army Intelligence.

That last point, as we shall see, is especially critical, because Army Intelligence figures show up in key roles before, at the time of, and in the immediate aftermath of the assassination.

Indeed, Matlack’s story would have rung true. De Mohrenschildt appears to have persuaded the Haitian Mr. Charles that he would be able to secure approval for the coup, and that Charles would be installed to replace Duvalier. It seems that de Mohrenschildt may have been directed to travel earlier to Haiti to persuade Charles to participate in the New York and Washington meetings – because he took a brief earlier trip to the island in March.

What passed for the feeble beginnings of a coup did in fact occur in Haiti, soon after de Mohrenschildt arrived on the island. But it didn’t succeed, and perhaps wasn’t intended to. De Mohrenschildt and his circle had no apparent problem with Papa Doc, even if the Kennedys did.

Duvalier, who was generally considered a friend by many elements in the U.S. military and intelligence establishment, did not suffer greatly. De Mohrenschildt’s “friend” Clemard Charles wasn’t so fortunate. The Haitian dictator jailed him for approximately a decade. Thus, Charles himself may have been another unwitting pawn.

Whether or not by design, the Haiti story served as the ultimate cover. It explained why de Mohrenschildt would know all these powerful people, and did so in the context of a supposed plot to depose a hated foreign leader.

Let’s play the tape again: De Mohrenschildt travels to the East Coast in the spring of 1963, on a mission that takes his story away from Poppy Bush, Jack Crichton, and others in the Texas intelligence network. His trail leads instead outside the United States, to geopolitical intrigue that is totally unrelated to Lee Harvey Oswald, the Soviet Union, or what was happening in Dallas. Even if disclosed, this new story would cause no great upset to the American people. Removing Duvalier and promoting democracy in the hemisphere were aims of the revered Kennedy himself.

It might seem impossibly convoluted. But in the shadow world of covert operations, it would be business as usual.

Cover for the Domestic Operations Division

There was even cover for the Domestic Operations division, a CIA program that was, on its face, problematical under the agency’s charter from Congress, which forbade its participation in any domestic surveillance or police operations directed at the American public.

The domestic division maintained an entire floor at 1750 Pennsylvania Avenue, near the White House. Among its operatives, according to his own testimony before Congress, was Dulles’s friend E. Howard Hunt, previously associated with the coup in Guatemala and the Bay of Pigs invasion, and subsequently convicted in Watergate.

Within hours after Devine met with de Mohrenschildt at the Knickerbocker Club, a Domestic Operations case officer in Washington was creating the legend that the domestic division, like WUBRINY, had no idea who de Mohrenschildt really was. The officer, Gale Allen, requested an “expedite check” of this supposedly unknown character. He got back a report from 1958 when de Mohrenschildt had returned from Yugoslavia and briefed J. Walton Moore of the CIA’s Dallas office.

This way, if de Mohrenschildt later claimed he knew Moore, it could be attributed to this innocuous 1958 briefing rather than the 1961 lunch to talk about Oswald.

To anyone who tried to follow this trail, it would appear that domestic operations was unfamiliar with George de Mohrenschildt. Were investigators to dig a bit further and happen upon the reports from WUBRINY, they would learn that George de Mohrenschildt was a self-aggrandizing entrepreneur with a taste for intrigue.

Dig still further, and they would learn that he was a friend of a Haitian banker who had been eager to foster a coup d’état against the evil President Duvalier. Each layer of this plausible cover story would lead the investigator further from the truth.

They even provided cover for the powerful oilmen who sponsored de Mohrenschildt’s travels to hot spots, ostensibly to represent their business interests. The Warren Commission reviewed some correspondence that shows meetings between de Mohrenschildt and these oilmen. In every case, the letters purport to relate to sisal, though some of the letters are suggestive of an unspoken alternative agenda.

For example, one 1962 letter, to de Mohrenschildt’s Dallas White Russian community “godfather” Paul Raigorodsky from the oilman Jean de Menil, who himself provided weapons to Cuban exiles, thanks the Russian for sending de Mohrenschildt around, and refers to some idea of de Mohrenschildt’s as not being “very well cooked” but does find it “slightly visionary.” It is hard to see sisal planting as even slightly visionary.

Yet this was indeed de Mohrenschildt’s cover, and it proved effective. There were numerous assassination inquiries in the 1970s, all in response to the failings of the Warren Commission. But none came close to penetrating the layered accounts I have just described. In fact, they did not even sniff the trail.

The Book Cover

One thing seems indisputable. By the time the de Mohrenschildts left the United States for Haiti in May 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald had been turned into a man with multiple personas, all of them capable of killing Kennedy. Oswald hated Kennedy either because he – Oswald – admired Castro or because he was anti-Castro. Perhaps Oswald was angry at Kennedy over the Bay of Pigs fiasco, or else he just liked to take potshots at important people. He was fond of guns, a bit violent, and even sometimes beat up his wife. He was a potential time bomb with a short fuse.

There was something in the lurid saga of Oswald to fit almost any theory, and therefore to confirm none. Whether Oswald was complicit or not in the process, his background and activities had been so muddled that no one would ever figure him out. Or settle for sure whose side he had been on. Or determine whether he was acting on his own or taking orders when he fired at Kennedy – if in fact he did.

Five months after de Mohrenschildt left for Haiti, Oswald obtained a job in a building along what barely six weeks later would be the Kennedy parade route. That building would become known as the Texas School Book Depository. In the years since, there has been endless debate over which weapon fired the fatal shots, whether it was Oswald who fired them, where the shots came from, ad infinitum. There has been not enough attention paid to the building itself and how Oswald happened to be there.

Some theories contend that Oswald – or anyone who might have been directing him – could not have known that the motorcade would pass by the Book Depository at the time he took the job there. But there were only two possible routes through downtown to JFK’s destination, the Dallas Trade Mart, and the Book Depository building stood on one of them.

If someone wanted to put Oswald along the route, he could have arranged for Oswald to secure a job in the Book Depository building, then selected the route that passed by there. Officially, the decision to reroute the motorcade from Main Street to Elm, in front of the Book Depository building, was made only a week before the event – by two Secret Service agents. But that does not mean that a determination of the final route was not made much earlier by someone who could share the information with Oswald or someone connected with him.

In any case, if it was Oswald’s intention to kill JFK from the Book Depository, he on his own could not possibly have known what the route would be at the time he obtained his job in the building. Only an insider involved with shaping JFK’s trip could have had any confidence that the Depository building would be on the ultimate route of the motorcade.

The Trade Mart was already known to be the likely venue of Kennedy’s Dallas luncheon speech, but according to the Secret Service, even if an alternative venue was chosen, there would be a high probability that a presidential parade would still pass right by the Book Depository. J. Lee Rankin, a general counsel for the Warren Commission, said that “to anticipate that this particular location would be a prime location for anything like this . . . is reasonable in light of our conversations with the Secret Service.”

The process that resulted in Oswald’s hiring at the Book Depository is yet another facet of the story that has gotten short shrift. Usually his presence in the building is portrayed as an accident of fate. Yet recall that the owner of the building was one D. Harold Byrd, a right-wing oilman, founder of the Civil Air Patrol, avid Kennedy hater – and a friend of both Clint Murchison and George de Mohrenschildt. This all could be coincidence, but surely it is the kind of coincidence that invites a few more questions.

Yet when I began researching Byrd, I was stunned to find that his name did not even appear in the vast majority of books by Kennedy assassination authorities, nor was he even interviewed by the Warren Commission. I found further that not only had Byrd employed de Mohrenschildt at his Three States Oil and Gas Co. during the 1950s, but that the connection went deeper still.

Documents I studied show that in September 1962, just weeks before he began to squire Oswald, George de Mohrenschildt incorporated a charity ostensibly devoted to the study of cystic fibrosis – and put D. Harold Byrd’s wife on the board. Mrs. Byrd’s role on the charity board would have created a convenient excuse for de Mohrenschildt to have been interacting with her husband during this period. Other board members included Paul Raigorodsky, J. Edgar Hoover’s good friend and the White Russian community’s godfather.

On May 24, 1963, in Dallas, the U.S. Air Force presented to D. Harold Byrd its Scroll of Appreciation for his work with the Civil Air Patrol (where Oswald was a cadet). Among the Air Force generals he counted as friends was Charles Cabell, Allen Dulles’s CIA deputy director, key Bay of Pigs figure, and brother of Dallas mayor Earle Cabell, also a good friend of Byrd’s.

So how did Oswald end up working at this building that belonged to a friend of de Mohrenschildt’s? The most widely accepted explanation is that Oswald got the job indirectly – via Ruth Paine, the new “friend” who had come to him through the efforts of the de Mohrenschildts, and who was providing a home for Oswald’s wife, Marina, and their daughter. Paine purportedly heard about the Book Depository from a neighbor, one Linnie Mae Randle, whose brother already worked there.

But missing from these accounts is that the neighbor’s brother had obtained his job there just slightly ahead of Oswald. Moreover, the brother had moved from a small Texas town to Dallas shortly beforehand.

Given what we now know about George de Mohrenschildt’s close relationship with Byrd, owner of the Book Depository building, and the chain of events that followed, it is plausible that Oswald’s hiring could have been deliberately orchestrated through this chain to obscure the underlying direct connection.

Then there is the intelligence background of Paine’s family, which was in addition to her mother-in-law’s ties to Dulles’s girlfriend. There was more to this simple Quaker housewife than meets the eye. When Marina Oswald was asked by the Orleans Parish grand jury why she had cut off contact with Ruth Paine after the assassination, she said:

I was advised by the Secret Service not to be connected with her, seems like she was . . . not connected . . . she was sympathizing with the CIA. She wrote letters over there and they told me for my own reputation, to stay away.

Is it possible that the brother was hired as a player – or in spycraft parlance, a “cut-out” – who could “refer” Oswald to a job in this particular building? This might seem speculative, but other pieces of the puzzle do point in that direction.

I was surprised to learn, for example, that the building was almost completely devoid of tenants until about six months before the assassination. I was even more surprised to learn that the very name, Texas School Book Depository, is misleading. It sounds like a building where the state of Texas kept schoolbooks.

But in fact, Texas School Book Depository was the name of a private company, which had operated out of another location before it moved into the building on Dealey Plaza in the spring of 1963. Until then, the structure was known as the Sexton Building.

The officers of the Book Depository Company were – like Byrd, Murchison, and their core group – outspoken critics of Kennedy, and also major military buffs. Its president turned out to be one Jack Cason, who was also the long-time head of the local American Legion post, a leading forum for hard-line military views.

The company, like all publishers and distributors of books that shaped the perceptions of young Americans – of all Americans – was of keen interest to the propaganda machinery of the U.S. government, and the intelligence community. Allen Dulles was even a member of the advisory board of Scholastic Magazines, whose publications were distributed to schoolchildren throughout the country.

These operations at least seem to offer a plausible explanation of why a man like Cason, affluent and socially connected, deeply involved in anti-Communist and military-themed activities, might choose to bypass more traditional pursuits such as oil and banking in favor of the textbook distribution business.

The CIA was deeply involved, abroad and at home, in creating and distributing literature that would promote democratic Western values in the cold war battle for hearts and minds. As the Senate’s Church Committee would note: “In 1967 alone, the CIA published or subsidized over 200 books, ranging from books on African safaris . . . to a competitor to Mao’s little red book, which was entitled Quotations from Chairman Liu.”

One such book, produced by the Domestic Operations division – the one that was monitoring Oswald – told the story of “a young student from a developing country who had studied in a communist country.” According to the CIA, that book “had a high impact in the United States.”

The important point here is that a division of the CIA was producing general nonfiction books, and it would not be inconceivable that it was also interested in the textbooks distributed by companies such as the Texas School Book Depository.

Allen Dulles even infiltrated that paragon of objectivity the Encyclopaedia Britannica, whitewashing the agency’s Bay of Pigs fiasco in an article in the 1963 Book of the Year.

It is worth noting that D. Harold Byrd, a big-game hunter, decided to take his first-ever foreign safari – to Africa – during this period. That removed him from Dallas precisely when the assassination took place.

Besides Byrd’s far-right politics, his founding role in the Civil Air Patrol, and his ties to de Mohrenschildt, he evidently rejoiced in Kennedy’s assassination – as suggested by the macabre fact that he arranged for the window from which Oswald purportedly fired the fatal shots to be removed and set up at his home.

Dulles Does Dallas

As far as we know, on November 22, 1963, George de Mohrenschildt was far away from Dallas too, managing his “business ventures” in Haiti. According to the record, de Mohrenschildt and Oswald had no contact during the prior six months.

It was this hiatus, and de Mohrenschildt’s physical absence from the United State, that enabled the Warren Commission to discount his otherwise glaring relationships with Oswald and Oswald’s pre-assassination “handlers” in Dallas. Not to mention his many links to members of the Texas Raj, who were noted for their anti-Kennedy animus and extensive ties to the national intelligence apparatus.

One curious matter concerns some communications about de Mohrenschildt in June 1963, between the Republic National Bank in Dallas and Brown Brothers Harriman in New York – where ex-senator Prescott Bush had just resumed work as a senior partner. The date is important because it is just after de Mohrenschildt leaves for Haiti.

The communications, revealed in an FBI agent’s report of 1964, appear odd. As it is presented, a confidential client of Brown Brothers, “a firm dealing in the import and export of fibers,” had made a credit inquiry “concerning George de Mohrenschildt.” Brown Brothers had replied that it knew nothing of him, but forwarded the inquiry to Republic National Bank, whose “report was favorable concerning de Mohrenschildt’s credit.”

Why this confidential client would ask a bank in New York about a man based in Texas – and this bank in particular – is not made clear. The thread, or fiber, tying this mini-episode to the larger unfolding drama is sisal. It gave yet more prominent people – including top officials at Republic National Bank and Prescott Bush at Brown Brothers Harriman – the same cover story it provided to everyone else: if anyone discovered that they had been dealing with de Mohrenschildt, they could claim that their sole motive was to make money off Haitian sisal.

The coincidences mount. After his dismissal as director of the CIA, Allen Dulles had written a book called The Craft of Intelligence – with the assistance of E. Howard Hunt. As might be expected, it was hardly a tell-all exposé. Reviewers were generally unimpressed, especially with the innocuous anecdotes. “It is a book that could as well have been written from an outside, as from an inside, view,” wrote one critic.

The book did, however, give Dulles a reason to remain in the public eye – including a visit to Dallas in late October 1963. Although excerpts had been published, most notably in Harper’s, starting at the beginning of the year, The Craft of Intelligence was held for release until the fall.

Dulles appears to have made no book-related appearances outside the Washington-New York corridor except for Dallas, to which he traveled at the invitation of Neil Mallon to speak at the Council on World Affairs. The Dallas Council would certainly be a receptive audience. After all, it had been conceived, in Mallon’s own words, along “the guidelines of central intelligence.”

This gives us Dulles in Dallas, scant weeks before the assassination; Al Ulmer, the foreign-based CIA coup expert, in Texas and visiting with Poppy Bush; E. Howard Hunt, top Dulles operative and covert operations specialist, said by his own son to have been in Dallas; and Poppy Bush in Dallas – until he leaves town either the night before or on the very day of the assassination and places his covering alibi phone call from Tyler, Texas.

Oswald’s all-too-public “friend” George de Mohrenschildt is safely off on important business in Haiti, and D. Harold Byrd is off on a safari. Again, this scenario may mean nothing. It all may just be coincidence. But the confluences among this cast of characters are at the very least remarkable.

It does not take a hypercharged imagination to construe a larger story of which they might be part, or to wonder why these people might have gone to such lengths to create “deniability” concerning any connections to the events in Dallas – unless they had a connection.

Another salient fact is that, on the day of the assassination, Deputy Police Chief George L. Lumpkin was driving the pilot car of Kennedy’s motorcade, a quarter mile ahead of JFK’s vehicle. Lumpkin was a friend of Jack Crichton, Poppy Bush’s GOP colleague.

Like Crichton, moreover, he was a member of an Army Intelligence Reserve unit. (Lumpkin would later tell the House Select Committee on Assassination that he had been consulted by the Secret Service on motorcade security, and his input had eliminated an alternative route.) In the car with Lumpkin was another Army officer, Lieutenant Colonel George Whitmeyer, commander of all Army Reserve units in East Texas, who happened to be Jack Crichton’s boss in the Reserve.

Although Whitmeyer was not on the police list of those approved to ride in the pilot car, he had insisted that he be in the vehicle and remained there until the shooting. The only recorded stop made by the pilot car was directly in front of the Depository building. Lumpkin stopped briefly there and spoke to a policeman handling traffic at the corner of Houston and Elm.

To the right of the motorcade, in front of the grassy knoll, stood Abraham Zapruder with his camera, ready to capture the 8-millimeter short film that would make his name famous.

The Zapruder film would be cited vigorously by both critics and supporters of the Warren Commission’s conclusions. As of late 2008, the latest attempt to back up the lone gunman theory was historian Max Holland’s twelve-years-in-the-making study of the assassination. Citing the Zapruder film, Holland argues that a careful study of it shows that Oswald actually fired the first shot earlier than previously calculated. This allows, according to Holland, enough time for Oswald to have gotten the second and third shots off before the car sped up. He says this new theory establishes that Oswald could have done it – and therefore indeed did do it, and did it alone. “If I restore faith in the Warren Commission,” Holland told the Washington Post, which published a highly sympathetic profile of the author, “I’ll put to rest some of the disturbing questions people have had.”

Zapruder is widely characterized as an innocent bystander, simply an onlooker who happened to capture historic footage that would dominate the evidentiary debate. Innocent he may well have been, but hardly unknown in Dallas intelligence circles.

It turns out that the short, bald recorder of history was also a former colleague of Mrs. de Mohrenschildt, who worked with her at Nardis when she first moved to Dallas. Zapruder also sat on the board of Neil Mallon’s Dallas Council on World Affairs. Like numerous figures in this story, he had a propensity for groups built on loyalty and secrecy, having sustained the status of thirty-second-degree Freemason.

The film he would make on November 22 would soon be purchased by Henry Luce, a Skull and Bones colleague of Prescott Bush and a devotee of intelligence – whose wife, Clare Booth Luce, had personally funded efforts to overthrow Castro. Henry Luce had warned that JFK would be punished if he went soft on Communism. After quickly purchasing the original Zapruder film, Luce’s Life magazine kept it in lockdown until New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison successfully subpoenaed it in 1969.

At the moment that Kennedy’s car passed the Stemmons Freeway sign on Elm Street, a man standing in front of the grassy knoll opened an umbrella and pumped it repeatedly above his head. Even the House Select Committee on Assassinations found it strange, given that it was a gloriously sunny day. Next to him was a man with a dark complexion who appeared to be speaking on a walkie-talkie shortly after shots were fired.

In 1978, one Louis Steven Witt came forward to identify himself as the “Umbrella Man.” A self-described “conservative-type fellow,” Witt claimed that he had opened his umbrella repeatedly because a colleague had told him that the gesture would annoy the president. He did not elaborate on why anyone would have thought this.

In his testimony before the House Select Committee on Assassinations, he lamented that “if the Guinness Book of World Records had a category for people who were at the wrong place at the wrong time, doing the wrong thing, I would be No. 1 in that position, without even a close runner-up.” He also claimed to have no recollection of the dark-complexioned man, though photos show the two men speaking. Witt’s curious and seemingly choreographed umbrella opening remains another question mark on a day full of perplexing coincidences.

Where Was Poppy? Part II

If indeed it can be established that Oswald was being guided to his destiny – either because he would become the shooter or because he would be framed for the shooting – then whoever was running him, and whoever was controlling Oswald’s controller, were integral parts of a plot.

By now, we have enough information to show, fairly conclusively, that Oswald was being managed by Poppy’s old friend de Mohrenschildt. We also have others connected with Poppy closely associated with the events of November 22. And we have Poppy creating an alibi for himself.

Details on who fired the gun, whose gun it was, and how many shots were fired from where remain relevant, but become of secondary importance. The central question is the story that lies behind these details.

In summation, here’s just some of the new, relevant information:

Poppy Bush was closely tied to key members of the intelligence community in cluding the deposed CIA head with a known grudge against JFK; he was also tied to Texas oligarchs who hated Kennedy’s politics and whose wealth was directly threatened by Kennedy; this network was part of the military/intelligence elite with a history of using assassination as an instrument of policy.

Poppy Bush was in Dallas on November 21 and most likely the morning of November 22. He hid that fact, he lied about knowing where he was, then he created an alibi based on a lead he knew was false. And he never acknowledged the closeness of his relationship with Oswald’s handler George de Mohrenschildt.

Poppy’s business partner Thomas Devine met with de Mohrenschildt during that period, on behalf of the CIA.

Poppy’s eventual Texas running mate in the 1964 election, Jack Crichton, was connected to the military intelligence figures who led Kennedy’s motorcade.

Crichton and D. Harold Byrd, owner of the Texas School Book Depository Building, were both connected to de Mohrenschildt – and directly to each other through oil-business dealings.

Byrd brought in the tenant that hired Oswald shortly before the assassination.

Oswald got his job in the building through a friend of de Mohrenschildt’s with her own intelligence connections – including family ties to Allen Dulles.

Even Jack Ruby’s slaying of Oswald fits the larger pattern seen here – one in which Oswald is indeed a “patsy” – a pawn in a deadly game who would never be permitted to say what he knew.

[Paul Trejo]

My theory still stands as plausible.

It's fascinating that, according to your theory, in order to kill Castro, Oswald would consider infiltrating himself into Cuba by hijacking an airplane.

I'm just wondering if he was going to do this before or after he got that "instant visa" from Sylvia Duran.

--Tommy

Well, Tommy, let's take this slower, please. In my theory, in order to kill Castro, on orders from Guy Banister (and his associates, Clay Shaw and David Ferrie), Oswald would fake being an officer of the FPCC in a fake chapter of the FPCC, and would get himself involved in police reports, newspaper stories, TV news spots, radio spots and even a TV show -- all showing without any shadow of a doubt that Lee Harvey Oswald was an officer of the FPCC.

With the newspaper clippings of all these events, Lee Harvey Oswald went to Mexico City, to show them to the Cuban consulate clerk there -- and to demand an "Instant Visa" to Cuba.

That isn't my theory -- that's a demonstrable fact. This was proven by Jim Garrison back in 1968. Carlos Bringuier and Ed Butler -- two radical Cuban Exiles -- pretended to be Lee's opponents in all this, when actually they were working for Guy Banister also -- and the media FRAMING of Lee Harvey Oswald was professionally accomplished by Ed Butler, an expert propagandist for INCA.

Now -- as for the completely separate and second part -- Oswald's talk about hijacking an airplane to Cuba -- this also is a fact, that is, it was stated in Marina Oswald's sworn testimony. That isn't my invention or theory. That is a historical fact -- Lee Oswald told Marina that he wanted to hijack a plane to Cuba.

Now -- WHY would Lee Oswald want to do this? Here is where my theory begins. Marina had no clue. Ron Lewis, who was a companion of Lee Oswald's during the summer of 1963 in New Orleans, had no clue why. They only knew that Lee worried for many days about hijacking a plane to Cuba, and bothered them endlessly about it.

Here's where my theory begins. I say that something caused Lee Oswald to doubt the word of Guy Banister, Clay Shaw and David Ferrie, when they promised him that getting into Cuba instantly would be easy if he could fake being an officer of the FPCC.

Why would Oswald doubt that? Oswald had spent months preparing for this. As early as May, 1963, he applied for an FPCC charter in New Orleans (and was denied but he did it anyway) and he also ordered a thousand FPCC handbills to be made (some of which had Guy Banister's address stamped on them). So, from May 1963, all the way to September 1963, when he went to Mexico City, Lee Harvey Oswald was playing ball with Guy Banister.

But suddenly -- out of the blue -- Lee Harvey Oswald suddenly decides that he will get into Cuba some other way. Not by an Instant Visa, but by hijacking an airplane.

WHY WOULD HE CHANGE HIS MIND?

The only reason that I can think of, is that Richard Case Nagell changed Lee Oswald's mind. According to Richard Case Nagell (as reported by Dick Russell in 1997) he was ordered by the KGB to kill Oswald in Mexico City, if Oswald did not extricate himself from his role in SOME assassination plot. So, it seems to me -- in my theory -- that Lee Harvey Oswald CHANGED HIS MIND about following Guy Banister's route to Cuba (i.e. an Instant Visa based on phony FPCC credentials) because Nagell forced him to change it.

What could Nagell have told Oswald to change his mind? He might have warned Oswald that he would kill him in Mexico City -- that's the likely scenario. I admit I have no proof for this theory.

Marina also says that Lee Harvey Oswald sat in his kitchen one night, all by himself, weeping. What would bring on this sort of stress to a US Marine? It seems to me that Oswald wanted more than anything to be a CIA Agent, and that Guy Banister & Co. were promising Lee a job in the CIA, if only he would follow their plans to get Fidel Castro killed.

But Richard Case Nagell, in order to protect his triple-agent cover with the KGB, would have to kill Lee Oswald in Mexico City if Oswald played along. This, I think, is what drove Lee Oswald to contemplate a different route to Cuba -- namely, hijacking a plane.

See the difference, Tommy? It's not both together -- it's EITHER/OR. EITHER Oswald would hijack a plane to Cuba, OR Oswald would go through with Guy Banister's plan to get an Instant Visa to Cuba based on these fake FPCC credentials that Oswald and his team had been forging since May 1963.

To his credit, Lee Oswald realized that hijacking a plane was a stupid idea. Still, he went along with Guy Banister's plan, and we have ample evidence that he did, because Lee Harvey Oswald went on to make a fool of himself at the Mexico City consulates in late September 1963.

So, yes, Tommy. My theory still stands as plausible.

Best regards,

--Paul Trejo

<edit typos>

Edited September 11, 2014 by Paul Trejo

[Thomas Graves]

It's just all interconnected, isn't it Steven?

--Tommy

Yes it is Tommy.

The trouble with it "all being interconnected," folks, is that it becomes chaotic, like a spaghetti-vegetable soup.

Everybody is a suspect -- including their parents and in-laws, their children and their adopted children.

It's fruitless, yet we're plagued with conspiracy thinkers who take their cues from the John Birch Society (e.g. the CFR, the Bilderbergers, and the Trilateral Commission are undermining the USA via the Federal Reserve Bank -- yes, that argument is also a half-century old, first taught by the JBS). Other conspiracists won't let go of their Nazi paranoia 70 years after the Fall of the Third Reich.

Yet as Jim Garrison said -- this is a murder case -- pure and simple.

When he started out, Jim Garrison didn't claim that the CIA killed JFK -- he claimed that some right-wing knuckleheads killed JFK -- and he could name some of them -- Guy Banister, David Ferrie, Clay Shaw, Jack S. Martin, Fred Crisman and Thomas Edward Beckley.

It was only after Jim Garrison hit the brick wall of FBI resistance to his case against Clay Shaw that Jim Garrison finally threw up his hands in despair, and realized he was out-numbered.

But instead of blaming the FBI (perhaps because Jim Garrison was once an FBI agent) Jim Garrison ended by blaming the CIA. But that was the end-game for Garrison -- not the starting point.

I say that Jim Garrison was closer to solving the JFK murder nearer to the start of his investigation. Why did we stop our focus on the New Orleans ground-crew? Just because there is not one single CIA Officer in the bunch?

It's time to get back to Jim Garrison's early case work. And remember -- Jim Garrison began by reading all 26 volumes of the Warren Commission's report.

Best regards,

--Paul Trejo

I believe that Oswald might have been sent to the Cuban Consulate in Mexico City as part of a collaboration between the FBI and the CIA to discredit the FPCC, as well as to test the Cuban and Russian "instant visa" protocols and to even possibly "feel out" Sylvia Duran and Eusebio Azcue for defecting to the U.S. or collaborating with the CIA. But these may have been only "cover operations", worthy in their own right, and designed to manipulate not only the Mexicans, the Cubans, and the Russians, but also to manipulate Lee Harvey Oswald himself into acting like a perfect "dangle".

In this view it's likely that Oswald was sent to Mexico City to participate, unwittingly, in James Jesus Angleton's grand Mole Hunt, but an "insider" found out about it and used it to set up Oswald as the patsy in such a way as to preclude the CIA from doing anything to prevent said patsification.

If not, then perhaps Oswald went to Mexico City to try to extricate himself from the conspiracy to kill JFK in which he'd found himself inmeshed, but was impersonated there and ended up being the topic of conversation in a mole hunt.

If I remember correctly, Mrs. Tarasoff, Winn Scott, and David Atlee Phillips all said (at one time or another) that while he was in Mexico City, "Oswald" offered to give "information" to the Russians in exchange for financial support or free passage to Russia. I'm thinking that if this "Oswald" was the Real Deal and not an impostor, then maybe the information he wanted to "sell" them was that there was a plot in the works to assassinate JFK, that the conspirators planned to set Oswald up as the patsy, and that if it was successful it would reflect very poorly on Russia due to the fact that Oswald had lived there and had taken a Russian wife. In other words, maybe Oswald was trying to prevent the assassination of JFK and save his own neck. After all, after snitching out the conspirators it probably would have been a good idea to move back to Russia.

--Tommy

Edited September 11, 2014 by Thomas Graves

[Paul Trejo]

...In other words, maybe Oswald was trying to prevent the assassination of JFK and save his own neck. After all, after snitching out the conspirators it probably would have been a good idea to move back to Russia.

--Tommy

Well, Tommy, if Lee Harvey Oswald snitched out Guy Banister, David Ferrie and Clay Shaw to the USSR when he was in Mexico City, then why didn't he move to the USSR immediately?

Also, if Oswald snitched out the JFK conspirators, then why did JFK still get murdered?

No -- Oswald didn't snitch out anybody -- nor was Oswald in any way, shape or form, a Communist. Oswald never joined a Communist Party. He actually had a fake Communist Party card that he showed the Cuban consulate in Mexico City! As if they couldn't tell a fake CP card!

Larry Hancock and Bill SImpich trace Oswald's moves in Mexico City with world-class precision. Lee Harvey Oswald made a fool of himself in Mexico City. When they denied him his "Instant Visa" he shouted, he screamed, he demanded to see managers, and in the USSR consulate he actually took a loaded pistol, and then he wept!

Hancock and SImpich are today's authorities on the actual events of Mexico City. Now -- as for the interpretation of those events, I think that Simpich is mistaken to imagine that the impersonators wanted to "blackmail" the CIA. But aside from that one mistake, I think that the work that Bill SImpich did on Mexico City is second to none.

Regards,

--Paul Trejo

Edited September 11, 2014 by Paul Trejo

[Thomas Graves]

...In other words, maybe Oswald was trying to prevent the assassination of JFK and save his own neck. After all, after snitching out the conspirators it probably would have been a good idea to move back to Russia.

--Tommy

Well, Tommy, if Lee Harvey Oswald snitched out Guy Banister, David Ferrie and Clay Shaw to the USSR when he was in Mexico City, then why didn't he move to the USSR immediately?

Also, if Oswald snitched out the JFK conspirators, then why did JFK still get murdered?

No -- Oswald didn't snitch out anybody --

[...]

I didn't say he had snitched anybody out.

Maybe he didn't snitch anyone out because the Russians wouldn't "play ball" with him.

Or maybe he did tell them but they refused to give him an "instant visa" or send him to Russia for free, and for whatever reason they did nothing to prevent the assassination.

--Tommy

Edited September 11, 2014 by Thomas Graves

[Paul Trejo]

I didn't say he had snitched anybody out.

Maybe he didn't snitch anyone out because the Russians wouldn't "play ball" with him.

Or maybe he did tell them but they refused to give him an "instant visa" or send him to Russia for free, and for whatever reason they did nothing to prevent the assassination.

--Tommy

Well, Tommy, it's my opinion that many JFK researchers have lost sight of Jim Garrison's early work.

Nobody can have a complete theory of the JFK murder without taking into consideration the roles played by Guy Banister, David Ferrie and Clay Shaw. (For those who are new to this literature, I recommend the film, JFK by Oliver Stone, 1991, now nearly a quarter-century old, because it's based on the 1988 book by Jim Garrison, On the Trail of the Assassins.)

To these three mandatory ground-crew we should add three others who were closely aligned with them in New Orleans, and who provided much information to Jim Garrision, and later to his protégé, Joan Mellen. I speak here of Jack S. Martin, Fred Crisman and Thomas Edward Beckley.

Furthermore, in the context of "sheep-dipping" Oswald (to use Jim Garrison's term) we must also include two radical Cuban Exiles, namely, Ed Butler (INCA) and Carlos Bringuier (DRE).

Furthermore, in harmony with insights derived from Larry Hancock's study of personnel, we should include Cuban Exiles and their American associates, including John Martino, Johnny Roselli, Gerry Patrick Hemming, Loran Hall and Larry Howard.

Jim Garrison interviewed most of these people. He gave special attention to Gerry Patrick Hemming and Loran Hall, for example.

Lee Harvey Oswald PRETENDED to be a Communist. This is one of the key features of Jim Garrison's theory. Lee Harvey Oswald was in no way, shape or form, a legitimate officer of the FPCC. He was a fake officer in a fake FPCC. Jim Garrison basically PROVED that, because the New Orleans FPCC chapter had only one member -- Lee Harvey Oswald, and it was run out of Guy Banister's office.

Furthermore, Lee Harvey Oswald had a fake Communist Party card with him in Mexico City.

Furthermore, Lee Harvey Oswald never PERSONALLY hung out with known Communists -- he hung out with known right-wing mercenaries, like Loran Hall, Larry Howard and Gerry Patrick Hemming, what to speak of Cuban Exiles who wanted nothing else than to murder Fidel Castro.

These were the PERSONAL associations of Lee Harvey Oswald. His contacts with known Communists was always through the mail -- the postal service -- in order to deliberately leave a visible paper trail. His PERSONAL contacts were always on the right-wing, and he kept them secret from his wife.

Both George De Mohrenschildt and Volkmar Schmidt said that they worked on Lee Harvey Oswald for an extended period to make him stop saying that JFK should be punished for his failure to act at the Bay of Pigs (and they painstakingly transferred his hostility to Ex-General Edwin Walker instead).

This harmonizes with what "Leopoldo" (probably Loran Hall) told Silvia Odio in a phone call a day or so after that 25 September 1963 visit to her door with "Angelo" and Lee Harvey Oswald -- that "the American says you Cubans don't have any guts, because you should have killed Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs."

Lee Harvey Oswald -- like Harry Dean -- wanted to be accepted as part of the American right-wing in 1963. Regarding the murder of JFK, they both engaged in right-wing conversations about it -- but when it came to actually doing the deed, they both backed off.

It was too late for Lee Harvey Oswald. The people that Jim Garrison named above had FRAMED Oswald as a Communist in newspaper, radio and TV.

Even down to this very day, you, Tommy, are still wondering if Lee Harvey Oswald was really a Communist. That's how good a job the ground-crew did with sheep-dipping Lee Harvey Oswald.

Regards,

--Paul Trejo

<edit typos>

Edited September 11, 2014 by Paul Trejo

[Thomas Graves]

[..]

Even down to this very day, you, Tommy, are still wondering if Lee Harvey Oswald was really a Communist. That's how good a job the ground-crew did with sheep-dipping Lee Harvey Oswald.

[...]

Dear Pedantic-Like-A-Professor,

Where did I say I thought Oswald was a Communist?

--Tommy

[Paul Trejo]

Dear Pedantic-Like-A-Professor,

Where did I say I thought Oswald was a Communist?

--Tommy

It's implicit, Tommy, in your suggestion that Oswald "snitched" on the JFK Kill Team to the USSR, so that he could go live in the USSR and escape the American right-wing.

That's obvious to many of us, I'm sure -- not just to me.

Regards,

--Paul Trejo

[Steven Gaal]

Mohammad Fayed (FA'ID below in memo) is sleeping with George de Mohrenschildt's daughter.

JAMES ANGLETON is giving and controlling George de Mohrenschildt information to the FBI.

Richard Helms is giving and controlling information to the WC. George de Mohrenschildt is a singleton for ANGLETON.

RICHARD HELMS , DD FOR PLANS,

STEPHEN C. MILLETT, JR. CHIEF, CI/S and C/CI. JAMES ANGLETON all monitor CIA asset de Mohrenschildt

######################################

AGENCY INFORMATION

AGENCY : CIA

RECORD NUMBER : 104-10166-10232

RECORDS SERIES : JFK

AGENCY FILE NUMBER : 80T01357A

DOCUMENT INFORMATION

ORIGINATOR : CIA

FROM : STEPHEN C. MILLETT, JR. CHIEF, CI/S

TO : WITHHELD

TITLE : FA'ID IS CURRENTLY NEGOTIATING AND ARMS DEAL WITH

PRESIDENT DUVALIER OF HAITI

DATE : 12/01/1964

PAGES : 1

DOCUMENT TYPE : PAPER - TEXTUAL DOCUMENT

SUBJECTS : DEMOHRENSCHILDT; JFK ASSASSINATION

CLASSIFICATION :

RESTRICTIONS : 1B

CURRENT STATUS : RELEASED WITH DELETIONS

DATE OF LAST REVIEW : 06/30/2004

COMMENTS : JFK64-5 : F17 : 20040301-1051962 :

****************************************************************************

AGENCY : CIA

RECORD NUMBER : 104-10431-10039

RECORDS SERIES : JFK

AGENCY FILE NUMBER : RUSS HOLMES WORK FILE

DOCUMENT INFORMATION

ORIGINATOR : CIA

FROM : ANGLETON JAMES

TO : DIRECTOR FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIG

TITLE : MEMO: ACTIVITIES OF GEORGE AND JEANNE DE MOHRENSCHILDT

IN HAITI

DATE : 04/05/1965

PAGES : 30

DOCUMENT TYPE : PAPER - TEXTUAL DOCUMENT

SUBJECTS : DEMOHRENSCHILDT

CLASSIFICATION : SECRET

RESTRICTIONS : OPEN IN FULL

CURRENT STATUS : OPEN

DATE OF LAST REVIEW : 09/16/1998

COMMENTS : JFK-RH18 : F1 : 1998.09.16.08:52:04:966128 :

*********************************************************************************

AGENCY : CIA

RECORD NUMBER : 104-10057-10413

RECORDS SERIES : JFK

AGENCY FILE NUMBER : 80T01357A

DOCUMENT INFORMATION

ORIGINATOR : CIA

FROM : HELMS, RICHARD, DD FOR PLANS

TO : RANKIN, J. LEE, WC

TITLE : STATEMENTS REPORTEDLY MADE BY GEORGE AND JEANNE DE

MOHRENSCHILDT CONCERNING LEE HARVEY OSWALD AND THE

ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT KENNEDY.

DATE : 07/06/1964

PAGES : 2

DOCUMENT TYPE : PAPER - TEXTUAL DOCUMENT

SUBJECTS : DEMOHRENSCHILDT; FINANCIAL AID; HAITI

CLASSIFICATION : UNCLASSIFIED

RESTRICTIONS : OPEN IN FULL

CURRENT STATUS : OPEN

DATE OF LAST REVIEW : 07/01/1993

COMMENTS : JFK1 : F30 : 1993.07.01.18:04:49:280250 : PREVIOUSLY

=============================================

Bush and the JFK Hit, Part 5: The Mysterious Mr. de Mohrenschildt

By Russ Baker on Oct 14, 2013

George de Mohrenschildt

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 fifth 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 5 come from Chapter 5 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; Part 4, here.

“Must have angered a lot of people”

In 1976, more than a decade after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, a letter arrived at the CIA, addressed to its director, the Hon. George Bush. The letter was from a desperate-sounding man in Dallas, who spoke regretfully of having been indiscreet in talking about Lee Harvey Oswald and begged Poppy for help:

Maybe you will be able to bring a solution into the hopeless situation I find myself in. My wife and I find ourselves surrounded by some vigilantes; our phone bugged; and we are being followed everywhere. Either FBI is involved in this or they do not want to accept my complaints. We are driven to insanity by this situation . . . tried to write, stupidly and unsuccessfully, about Lee H. Oswald and must have angered a lot of people . . . Could you do something to remove this net around us? This will be my last request for help and I will not annoy you anymore.

The writer signed himself “G. de Mohrenschildt.”

The CIA staff assumed the letter writer to be a crank. Just to be sure, however, they asked their boss: Did he by any chance know a man named de Mohrenschildt?Bush responded by memo, seemingly self-typed:

I do know this man DeMohrenschildt. I first men [sic] him in the early 40’3 [sic]. He was an uncle to my Andover roommate. Later he surfaced in Dallas (50’s maybe) . . . Then he surfaced when Oswald shot to prominence. He knew Oswald before the assassination of Pres. Kennedy. I don’t recall his role in all this.

Not recall? Once again, Poppy Bush was having memory problems. And not about trivial matters. George de Mohrenschildt was not just the uncle of a roommate, but a longtime personal associate. Yet Poppy could not recall – or more precisely, claimed not to recall – the nature of de Mohrenschildt’s relationship with the man believed to have assassinated the thirty-fifth president.

This would have been an unusual lapse on anyone’s part. But for the head of an American spy agency to exhibit such a blasé attitude, in such an important matter, was over the edge. At that very moment, several federal investigations were looking into CIA abuses – including the agency’s role in assassinations of foreign leaders. These investigations were heading toward what would become a reopened inquiry into Kennedy’s death. Could it be that the lapse was not casual, and the acknowledgment of a distant relationship was a way to forestall inquiry into a closer one?

Writing back to his old friend, Poppy assured the Mohrenschildt that his fears were entirely unfounded. Yet half a year later, de Mohrenschildt was dead. The cause was officially determined to be suicide with a shotgun. Investigators combing through de Mohrenschildt’s effects came upon his tattered address book, largely full of entries made in the 1950’s. Among them, though apparently eliciting no further inquiries on the part of the police, was an old entry for the current CIA director, with the Midland address where he had lived in the early days of Zapata:

BUSH, GEORGE H. W. (POPPY), 1412 W. OHIO ALSO ZAPATA PETROLEUM MIDLAND.

De Mohrenschildt and the Oswalds

When Poppy told his staff that his old friend de Mohrenschildt “knew Oswald,” that was an understatement. From 1962 through the spring of 1963, de Mohrenschildt was by far the principal influence on Oswald, the older man who guided every step of his life. De Mohrenschildt had helped Oswald find jobs and apartments, had taken him to meetings and social gatherings, and generally had assisted with the most minute aspects of life for Lee Oswald, his Russian wife, Marina, and their baby.

De Mohrenschildt’s relationship with Oswald has tantalized and perplexed investigators and researchers for decades. In 1964, de Mohrenschildt and his wife Jeanne testified to the Warren Commission, which spent more time with them than any other witness – possibly excepting Oswald’s widow, Marina. The Commission, though, focused on George de Mohrenschildt as a colorful, if eccentric, character, steering away every time de Mohrenschildt recounted yet another name from a staggering list of influential friends and associates. In the end, the commission simply concluded in its final report that these must all be coincidences and nothing more. The de Mohrenschildts, the Commission said, apparently had nothing to do with the assassination.

Even the Warren Commission counsel who questioned George de Mohrenschildt appeared to acknowledge that the Russian émigré was what might euphemistically be called an “international businessman.” For most of his adult life, de Mohrenschildt had traveled the world ostensibly seeking business opportunities involving a variety of natural resources – some, such as oil and uranium, of great strategic value. The timing of his overseas ventures was remarkable. Invariably, when he was passing through town, a covert or even overt operation appeared to be unfolding – an invasion, a coup, that sort of thing. For example, in 1961, as exiled Cubans and their CIA support team prepared for the Bay of Pigs invasion in Guatemala, George de Mohrenschildt and his wife passed through Guatemala City on what they told friends was a month-long walking tour of the Central American isthmus. On another occasion, the de Mohrenschildts appeared in Mexico on oil business just as a Soviet leader arrived on a similar mission – and even happened to meet the Communist official. In a third instance, they landed in Haiti shortly before an unsuccessful coup against its president that had U.S. fingerprints on it.

A Russian-born society figure was a friend both of the family of President Kennedy and his assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. A series of strange coincidences providing the only known link between the two families before Oswald fired the shot killing Mr. Kennedy in Dallas a year ago was described in testimony before The Warren Commission by George S. de Mohrenschildt.

He was actually much more intriguing – and mystifying. As Norman Mailer noted in his book Oswald’s Tale, de Mohrenschildt possessed “an eclecticism that made him delight in presenting himself as right-wing, left-wing, a moralist, an aristocrat, a nihilist, a snob, an atheist, a Republican, a Kennedy lover, a desegregationist, an intimate of oil tycoons, a bohemian, and a socialite, plus a quondam Nazi apologist, once a year.”

A Name Never Dropped

During all these examinations, and notwithstanding de Mohrenschildt’s offhand recitation of scores of friends and colleagues, obscure and recognizable, he scrupulously never mentioned that he knew Poppy Bush. Nor did investigators uncover the fact that in the spring of 1963, immediately after his final communication with Oswald, de Mohrenschildt had traveled to New York and Washington for meetings with CIA and military intelligence officials. He even had met with a top aide to Vice President Johnson. And the commission certainly did not learn that one meeting in New York included Thomas Devine, then Bush’s business colleague in Zapata Offshore, who was doing double duty for the CIA.

Had the Warren Commission’s investigators comprehensively explored the matter, they would have found a phenomenal and baroque backstory that contextualizes de Mohrenschildt within the extended petroleum-intelligence orbit in which the Bushes operated.

Getting America Into World War I

The de Mohrenschildts were major players in the global oil business since the beginning of the twentieth century, and their paths crossed with the Rockefellers and other key pillars of the petroleum establishment. George de Mohrenschildt’s uncle and father ran the Swedish Nobel Brothers Oil Company’s operations in Baku, in Russian Azerbaijan on the southwestern coast of the Caspian Sea. This was no small matter. In the early days of the twentieth century, the region held roughly half of the world’s known oil supply. By the start of World War I, every major oil interest in the world, including the Rockefellers’ Standard Oil, was scrambling for a piece of Baku’s treasure or intriguing to suppress its competitive potential. (Today, ninety years later, they are at it again.)

In 1915, the czar’s government dispatched a second uncle of George de Mohrenschildt, the handsome young diplomat Ferdinand von Mohrenschildt, to Washington to plead for American intervention in the war – an intervention that might rescue the czarist forces then being crushed by the invading German army. President Woodrow Wilson had been reelected partly on the basis of having kept America out of the war. But as with all leaders, he was surrounded by men with their own agendas. A relatively close-knit group embodying the nexus of private capital and intelligence-gathering inhabited the highest levels of the Wilson administration. Secretary of State Robert Lansing was the uncle of a diplomat-spy by the name of Allen Dulles. Wilson’s closest adviser, “Colonel” Edward House, was a Texan and an ally of the ancestors of James A. Baker III, who would become Poppy Bush’s top lieutenant. Czarist Russia then owed fifty million dollars to a Rockefeller-headed syndicate. Keeping an eye on such matters was the U.S. ambassador to Russia, a close friend of George Herbert Walker’s from St. Louis.

Once the United States did enter the war, Prescott Bush’s father, Samuel Bush, was put in charge of small arms production. The Percy Rockefeller-headed Remington Arms Company got the lion’s share of the U.S. contracts. It sold millions of dollars worth of rifles to czarist forces, while it also profited handsomely from deals with the Germans.

In 1917, Ferdinand von Mohrenschildt’s mission to bring America into the world war was successful on a number of levels. Newspaper clippings of the time show him to be an instant hit on the Newport, Rhode Island, millionaires’ circuit. He was often in the company of Mrs. J. Borden Harriman, of the family then befriending Prescott Bush and about to hire Prescott’s future father-in-law, George Herbert Walker. Not long after that, Ferdinand married the step-granddaughter of President Woodrow Wilson.

In quick succession, the United States entered World War I, and the newlywed Ferdinand unexpectedly died. The von Mohrenschildt family fled Russia along with the rest of the aristocracy. Emanuel Nobel sold half of the Baku holdings to Standard Oil of New Jersey, with John D. Rockefeller Jr. personally authorizing the payment of $11.5 million. Over the next couple of decades, members of the defeated White Russian movement, which opposed the Bolsheviks and fought the Red Army from the 1917 October Revolution until 1923, would find shelter in the United States, a country that shared the anti-Communist movement’s ideological sentiments.

Bush and de Mohrenschildt Families: Deeply Intertwined

In 1920, Ferdinand’s nephew Dimitri von Mohrenschildt, the older brother of George, arrived in the United States and entered Yale University. His admission was likely smoothed by the connections of the Harriman family, which soon persuaded the Bolshevik Russian government to allow them to reactivate the Baku oilfields. At that point, the Harriman operation was being directed by the brilliant international moneyman George Herbert Walker, the grandfather of Poppy Bush.

The Soviets had expropriated the assets of the Russian ruling class, not least the oil fields. Though ultimately willing to cooperate with some Western companies, the Communists had created an army of angry White Russian opponents, who vowed to exact revenge and regain their holdings. This group, trading on an American fascination with titles, was soon ensconced in (and often intermarried with) the East Coast establishment. The New York newspapers of the day were full of reports of dinners and teas hosted by Prince This and Count That at the top of Manhattan hotels.

Dimitri von Mohrenschildt plunged into this milieu. After graduating from Yale, he was offered a position teaching the young scions of the new oil aristocracy at the exclusive Loomis School near Hartford, Connecticut, where John D. Rockefeller III was a student (and his brother Winthrop soon would be). There, Dimitri became friendly with Roland and Winifred “Betty” Cartwright Holhan Hooker, who were prominent local citizens. Roland Hooker was enormously well connected; his father had been the mayor of Hartford, his family members were close friends of the Bouviers (Jackie Kennedy’s father’s family), and his sister was married to Prince Melikov, a former officer in the Imperial Russian Army.

While Dimitri von Mohrenschildt clearly enjoyed the high-society glamour, in reality his life was heading underground. Dimitri’s lengthy covert resumé would include serving in the Office of Strategic Services wartime spy agency and later cofounding Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. In 1941, Dimitri also founded a magazine, the Russian Review, and later became a professor at Dartmouth.

When the Hooker marriage unraveled, Dimitri began seeing Betty Hooker. In the summer of 1936, immigration records show that Dimitri traveled to Europe, followed a week later by Betty Hooker with her young daughter and adolescent son.

Betty’s son, Edward Gordon Hooker, entered prep school at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. There, he shared a small cottage with George H. W. “Poppy” Bush. Bush and Hooker became inseparable. They worked together on Pot Pourri, the student yearbook, whose photos show a handsome young Poppy Bush and an even more handsome Hooker. The friendship would continue in 1942, when both Bush and Hooker, barely eighteen, enlisted in the Navy and served as pilots in the Pacific. Afterward, they would be together at Yale. When Hooker married, Poppy Bush served as an usher. The relationship between Bush and Hooker lasted for three decades, until 1967, when Hooker died of an apparent heart attack. He was just forty-three. Six years after Hooker’s death, Poppy Bush would serve as surrogate father, giving away Hooker’s daughter at her wedding to Ames Braga, scion of a Castro-expropriated Cuban sugar dynasty.

Another Careful Disconnect

The relationship couldn’t have been much closer. Yet Bush never mentions Hooker in his memoirs or published recollections, even though he finds room for scores of more marginal figures. Certainly his family was aware of Hooker.

Poppy’s prep school living arrangements would have mattered to Prescott Bush. The Bush clan is famously gregarious, and like many wealthy families, it puts great stock in the establishment of social networks that translate into influence and advantage. Prescott took a strong interest in meeting his children’s friends and the friends’ parents, as expressed in family correspondence and memoirs. Moreover, as a prominent Connecticut family with deep colonial roots, the Hookers would have had great appeal for Prescott Bush, an up-and-coming Connecticut resident with political aspirations and a great interest in the genealogy of America’s upper classes.

In 1937, Betty Hooker and Dimitri von Mohrenschildt married. By then, Dimitri had been hired by Henry Luce as a stringer for Time magazine. Prescott would likely have been keen to know his son’s roommate’s stepfather – this intriguing Russian anti-Communist aristocrat, with a background in the oil business and a degree from Yale, working for Prescott’s Skull and Bones friend Luce.

Meanwhile, Dimitri’s younger brother, George, had been living with their family in exile in Poland, where he finished high school and then joined a military academy and the cavalry. In May 1938, George arrived from Europe and moved in with his brother and new sister-in-law in their Park Avenue apartment. Young George de Mohrenschildt came to America armed with the doctoral dissertation that reflected the future trajectory of his life: “The Economic Influence of the United States on Latin America.” The oil south of the border was certainly of interest to Wall Street figures such as Prescott Bush and his colleagues, who were deeply involved in financing petroleum exploration in new areas.

From Émigré to Spy

The White Russian émigrés in the United States were motivated by both ideology and economics to serve as shock troops in the growing cold war conflict being managed by Prescott’s friends and associates. No one understood this better than Allen Dulles, the Wall Street lawyer, diplomat, and spy-master-in ascension. Even in the period between the two world wars, Dulles was already molding Russian émigrés into intelligence operatives. He moved back and forth between government service and Wall Street lawyering with the firm Sullivan and Cromwell, whose clients included United Fruit and Brown Brothers Harriman. The latter was at that time led by Averell and Roland Harriman and Prescott Bush.

Whether in government or out, Dulles’s interests and associates were largely the same. He seemed to enjoy the clandestine work more than the legal work. As Peter Grose notes in Gentleman Spy: The Life of Allen Dulles, he worked during the 1940 presidential campaign to bring Russian, Polish, and Czechoslovak émigrés into the Republican camp. “Allen’s double life those first months after Pearl Harbor [in 1941] had specific purpose, of course,” Grose observes. “The mysterious émigrés he was cultivating in New York were potential assets for an intelligence network to penetrate Nazi Germany.”

Dimitri von Mohrenschildt was a star player in this game on a somewhat exalted level. He found sponsorship for a role as an academic and publisher specializing in anti-Bolshevik materials, and later became involved in more ambitious propaganda work with Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe. Younger brother George was more willing to get his hands dirty. He took a job in the New York office of a French perfume company called Chevalier Garde, named for the Czar’s most elite troops, the Imperial Horse Guards. His bosses were powerful czarist Russian émigrés, well connected at the highest levels of Manhattan society, who worked during World War II in army intelligence and the OSS. One of them, Prince Serge Obolensky, had escaped Soviet Russia after a year of hiding and became a much-married New York society figure whose wives included Alice Astor. His brother-in-law Vincent Astor was secretly asked by FDR in 1940 to set up civilian espionage offices in Manhattan at Rockefeller Center. Astor was soon joined in this effort by Allen Dulles.

The next stop for George de Mohrenschildt was a home furnishings company. His boss there was a high-ranking French intelligence official, and together they monitored and blocked attempts by the Axis war machine to procure badly needed petroleum supplies in the Americas. Young de Mohrenschildt then traveled to the southwest, where he exhibited still more impressive connections. Ostensibly there to work on oil derricks, he landed a meeting with the chairman of the board of Humble Oil, the Texas subsidiary of Standard Oil of New Jersey, predecessor to Exxon.

Prince Serge Obolensky, circa 1943

The jobs kept becoming more interesting. By the midforties, de Mohrenschildt was working in Venezuela for Pantepec Oil, the firm of William F. Buckley’s family. Pantepec later had abundant connections with the newly created CIA and was deeply involved in foreign intrigue for decades. The Buckley boys, like the Bushes, had been in Skull and Bones, and Bill Buckley, whose conservative intellectual magazine National Review was often politically helpful to Poppy Bush, would in later years admit to a stint working for the CIA himself.

George de Mohrenschildt’s foreign trips – and some of his domestic wanderings as well – drew the interest of various American law enforcement agencies. These incidents appear to have been deliberate provocations, such as his working on “sketches” outside a U.S. Coast Guard station. In many of these cases de Mohrenschildt would be briefly questioned or investigated, the result of which was a dossier not unlike that of Lee Harvey Oswald’s. These files were full of declared doubts about his loyalties and speculation at various times that he might be a Russian, Japanese, French, or German spy. A classic opportunist, he might have been any or all of these. But he also could have simply been an American spy who was creating a cover story

It's just all interconnected, isn't it Steven?

--Tommy

http://stevenhager420.wordpress.com/tag/yuri-nosenko/

==================

In the 1960s, he was known around Langley by his CIA code name: Kingfisher.

It’s probably not a good idea to take on an exalted title like that unless you have some real power to wield and as the director of counterintelligence, Angleton was responsible for a lot of the dirty tricks at CIA during his reign. He’s become the subject of dozens of books and movies, most recently The Good Shepherd, although his multiple connections to the JFK hit never seem to surface in the mainstream media.

Angleton got his powerful post after serving as the Vatican’s CIA liaison during WWII, working closely with Allen Dulles to shield important Nazis who were given new jobs working for US interests after the war. According to Angleton, before getting his promotion, he had to promise Dulles never to put him or any of his Wall Street-connected cronies on lie detectors in order to question them about financial relations with Germany during the war. You see, many US corporations employed neutral countries to trade with the enemy, including Standard Oil, a company owned by Dulles’ cousin David Rockefeller. If you want to get really rich during war, sell to both sides.

Not only did Angleton remain in charge of the important CIA-Vatican connection, he also became the strategic CIA link to Israel and their efficient Mossad, an intelligence agency not hampered by red tape.

The sad reality is that after he got his post, Angleton was swiftly compromised by British double agent Kim Philby, who gleaned many secrets before departing back to England. Philby had spent many nights plying the chain-smoking Angleton with liquor so they could talk shop. The main subject of conversation was the suspected mole inside British intelligence who kept the KGB one step ahead of Angleton, and who might that mole be? Before long, a nest of Soviet spies (the Cambridge 5) was uncovered and a few revealed, although Philby was exonerated and Victor Rothschild never seriously investigated. Philby began working as a journalist covering the Middle East, while secretly reporting to MI6. But in 1961, Anatoliy Golitsyn, a KGB major, defected to the West and established his bona fides by offering up Philby as KGB and part of the Cambridge ring that had been operating since before WWII.

CIA spook William Buckley would write the first major book on how Angleton went crazy after Philby was unmasked. Buckley is Skull & Bones and card carrying member of the oligarchy, just like Angleton, only maybe a little higher on the pecking order. But Golitsyn was a fake defector seeding disinfo. His major thrust was that many highly placed people in Western power were really KGB, just like Philby. Golitsyn even claimed British Prime Minister Harold Wilson was a KGB spy. And he also claimed there was another KGB spy was very high up in the US government as well. Obviously, these rabbit holes served mostly to amp up Angleton’s paranoia. He’d spend the next few years hunting for an imaginary highly-placed mole in Washington DC, and at one point accused just about everyone in power. Did Golitsuyn also finger JFK as well as Wilson? I think this seems pretty likely. Strangely, Golitsyn became an Honorary Commander of the British Empire. And what do you think would have happened if Angleton had written a report saying JFK was a Soviet spy? Would that have justified a national security project to remove JFK from power?

But after JFK was assassinated, along came a real Soviet defector name Yuri Nosenko, who arrived in 1964. Since Nosenko did not concur with much of anything Golitsyn had been saying, and, in fact, was more highly situated and knew more than Golitsyn, Nosenko was held prisoner for four years and tortured continuously and fed LSD and other drugs in an attempt to break him down. And the entire time Angleton kept telling everyone Nosenko was a fake whose only mission was to discredit Golitsyn.

In retrospect Angleton seems borderline incompetent since he’d been played by Philby and Golitsyn. One wonders how Angleton kept his job so long, although keep in mind his files were probably more explosive than J. Edgar Hoover’s.

And then, of course, there’s Angleton’s vast connections to the JFK assassination cover-up. It’s no accident Angleton was named CIA liason with the Warren Commission and swiftly replaced John Whitten as official CIA investigator of the incident. Moves like that are made when a fox is needed to watch the hen house.

The dead bodies piled up pretty quick around Angleton, especially his wife’s best friend Mary Meyer and his former friend Win Scott, the Mexico City CIA station chief who launched his own private investigation into JFK’s assassination, something Angleton seemed desperate to shut down before it got started.

Since the assassination was organized through the CIA’s JM/WAVE station and William Harvey played a key role, it’s critical to consider Angleton’s role in shielding Harvey after JFK ordered him fired. Angleton moved Harvey to Rome and then likely brought him back for the operation. Ted Shackley was running JM/WAVE so he had to know what was going on, as did Richard Helms obviously because he went on to become CIA director. In fact, if you want to know who was involved in some aspect of this coup, just consider who assumes great power in later years. Certainly the Bush family could owe a portion of its rise to prominence through a hidden connection to the coup. Shackley went on to run the Phoenix program in Vietnam with William Colby and that became the largest CIA assassination program in history. I talked to one of the key players involved a few years ago, and he told me that he’d gone back to Vietnam after the war only to discover the man in charge of providing many of the names of those who needed to be assassinated turned out to be a double agent. He later became an important figure in the Vietnamese government. If that’s true, then the people getting assassinated by Phoenix were probably just moderate tribal leaders because once you wipe out the true alphas of any tribe, it leaves the door open to put some corrupt stooges in their place.

============

You’d think all the JFK assassination records would be public after 50 years but did you know CIA files on seven individuals are withheld for reasons of “national security?” The CIA may be withholding as many as 50,000 pages of documents related to the assassination. But it doesn’t take much imagination to realize what they don’t want released might help reveal what they are trying to hide, so let’s look into these seven mysterious people.

1) George Joannides.

Joannides was head of Psychological Warfare at JM/WAVE in Miami, the CIA’s largest and best-funded satellite station, although he apparently lived in New Orleans much of the time, where two training camps were located north of Lake Pontchartrain. One of his primary duties was supervising the Cuban Student Directorate (DRE), an anti-Castro exile group. When Oswald first arrived in New Orleans, he attempted to infiltrate the DRE before starting a one-man chapter of the pro-Castro Fair Play for Cuba. Soon Oswald had a confrontation with some members of the DRE in the streets of New Orleans that led to newspaper and radio coverage, sheep-dipping Oswald as being pro-Castro.

Immediately after the assassination, all information the press initially received about Oswald was released through DRE members in Miami on orders of Joannides. In other words, in his role as a propaganda expert, Joannides shaped initial press coverage on Oswald. Keep in mind, the assassination was essentially organized through JM/WAVE’s ZR/RIFLE Program. So Joannides’ work in this area must be viewed as psychological warfare conducted on the unsuspecting American public.

When the House Committee on Assassinations was formed in the 1970s, Congress sent two researchers to investigate the CIA files on the assassination, which could not be removed from Langley. Strangely, Joannides was brought out of retirement to stonewall and block those two investigators so all trails into JM/WAVE could not be followed. But how transparent can you get, really? There should have been massive objection to Joannides as anything but a suspect in this case, and he certainly should not have been allowed to become the primary gatekeeper on CIA files.

2) William K. Harvey.

Harvey became the go-to guy at the CIA’s Berlin station after he engineered the building of a tunnel under the Berlin Wall used to tap into Soviet communications. But after the fall of the Soviet Union, it would be revealed the Soviets had been tipped off to Harvey’s operation and manipulated this listening post to leak disinfo, once again proving the KGB was often somewhat strangely one step ahead of the CIA throughout the cold war.

After Ted Shackley was moved from Berlin to Miami to direct the war against Castro, he brought Angleton’s star agent with him. The code name given to their new Executive Action Program was ZR/RIFLE and Bill Harvey was put in charge because he was the most ruthless go-to guy at CIA. But after JFK converted to work on world peace and wanted all anti-Castro operations shut down, he soon discovered Harvey didn’t respond to Presidential directives he didn’t agree with. JFK ordered Harvey sacked, but instead James Angleton moved him to Italy and his assassination squad, featuring handsome Johnny Roselli and other made members of the Chicago outfit, was soon directed towards a new target: JFK.

Harvey instructed his wife to burn all his papers upon his death. When asked why this was done, John M. Whitten, who briefly investigated the assassination before being replaced by Angleton himself, replied: “He was too young to have assassinated McKinley and Lincoln. It could have been anything.”

Strangely, Harvey’s obvious connections to this case have never really been been explored in the mainstream media.

3) David Morales

Morales was already the CIA’s top assassin in Central America when Harvey recruited him into the ZR/RIFLE project to become his number one go-to assassin after Johnny Roselli. According the E. Howard Hunt’s deathbed confession, Morales tried to recruit Hunt into the assassination plot, but Hunt apparently turned it down, which may be why he became an official CIA fallback patsy backstop.

There’s a famous quote Morales gave while drunk one night, taking credit for being on the scene when both Kennedy brothers were killed.

4) David Atlee Phillips.

Phillips was one of the few CIA officials seen in the company of Oswald prior to the assassination (under the name Maurice Bishop). This sighting occurred while he was Mexico City’s anti-Cuban officer, working under Winston Scott, but not really reporting to Win in regards to Oswald. After the assassination Phillips would quickly rise to become head of the western hemisphere operations and later created the anti-conspiracy propaganda operation known as the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO), which became an important tool for holding back citizen researchers from uncovering the truth about the CIA’s involvement in killing JFK.

5) Anne Goodpasture.

Goodpasture had an interesting trajectory through the CIA. She became a special agent of James Angleton’s and eventually ended up down in Mexico City working for Win Scott. Whether Scott fully trusted her, I can’t say, but she was involved in hiding evidence of Oswald in Mexico and later became very close with David Phillips. Although she looked like a librarian, she was a master spook and wrote a 500-page secret history of the CIA in Mexico that hopefully will one day be released.

E. Howard Hunt.

As team leader on the Bay of Pigs, nobody seemed to hate JFK more than Hunt. And Hunt did become Angleton’s patsy in a way because he was falsely ID’d as one of the three tramps and then an Angleton memo placed him in Dallas that day. I suspect Hunt had little to do with this case, however, and was used more as a backstop than anything else. However, his close association with David Phillips may have afforded him a window on what was going on, although spooks are often left in the dark when it comes to covert operations. But of all the people listed so far, Hunt seems the most removed from the central core.

Yuri Nosenko.

In April 1964, Nosenko tried to defect to the USA. He was a high-ranking KGB official who had recently reviewed the files on Oswald, someone the Soviets always suspected was an American agent and not a true defector. The CIA is hiding over 2,000 pages on Nosenko and his torture under the orders of James Angleton, who sought to break down Nosenko’s personality because he was contradicting Antoliy Golitsyn, a previous KGB defector who had become Angleton’s pet project. Golitsyn was also favored by British intelligence, but his material was wildly unreliable. Meanwhile, the more believable Nosenko, a true defector, was treated as harshly as possible, possibly in part due to his efforts to brand Oswald an American agent. You see, Oswald was an American secret agent, and he worked directly under James Angleton, which completes this circle of info and hopefully reveals some shadows of the team that killed JFK as well as some of the major players who helped cover up that event.

== ((((( TO REPEAT ))))) ==

Oswald and the CIA, by John Newman Reviewed by James DiEugenio

==

Now, with caveats out of the way, lets get to the rewards in this valuable, and undervalued, book. No person, or body, not even the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), has ever dug more deeply into what the American intelligence community knew about Oswald prior to the assassination. What Newman reveals here literally makes the Warren Commission look like a Model T Ford. All the denials issued to that body by the likes of John McCone and J. Edgar Hoover are exposed as subterfuges. Contrary to their canards, there was a lot of interest in Oswald from the time he defected to Russia until the assassination.

Newman first discovered this when he was hired by PBS to work on their ill-fated Frontline special about Oswald in 1993. And it was this discovery that inspired him to write the book. The CIA Director at the time of the debate in Congress over the creation of the Assassination Records Review Board had testified there were something like 39 documents at CIA about Oswald. Most of them were supposed to be clippings. Newman discovered there was many, many times that amount. Further, he discovered the Agency held multiple files on Oswald. And finally, and perhaps most interestingly, there were some puzzling irregularities within the record. (When the author expressed his continuing bewilderment about this to the archivist, the archivist replied, "Haven't you ever heard of Murphy's Law?" To which Newman shot back, "Every time I turn around I'm walking into Mr. Murphy.")

Mr. Murphy makes his appearance right at the start. Once Oswald defected to Russia in 1959 the FBI opened up a file on him for security purposes. But at the CIA there is a curious, and suspicious, vacuum. Richard Snyder of the American Embassy in Moscow sent a cable to Washington about Oswald's defection. But the exact date the CIA got it cannot be confirmed (p. 24). Further, the person who received it cannot be determined either. Since Oswald was a former Marine, the Navy also sent a cable on November 4th. This cable included the information that Oswald had threatened to give up radar secrets to the Soviets. But again, no one knows exactly when this cable arrived at CIA. And almost as interesting, where it was placed upon its immediate arrival. (p. 25) This is quite odd because, as Newman points out (Chapter 3), Oswald's close association with the U-2 plane while at Atsugi, Japan should have placed alerts all over this cable. It did not. To show a comparison, the FBI recommended "a stop be placed against the fingerprints to prevent subject's entering the US under any name." (Ibid) So, on November 4, 1959, the FBI issued a FLASH warning on Oswald. This same Navy memo arrived at CIA and, after a Warren Report type "delayed reaction", eventually went to James Angleton's CI/SIG unit on December 6th. Angleton was chief of counter-intelligence. SIG was a kind of safeguard unit that protected the Agency from penetration agents. It was closely linked to the Office of Security in that regard. But as Newman queries: where was it for the previous 31 days? Newman notes that the Snyder cable and this Navy memo fell into a "black hole " somewhere. In fact, the very first file Newman could find on Oswald was not even at CI/SIG. It was at the Office of Security. This is all quite puzzling because, as the author notes, neither should have been the proper resting place for an initial file on Oswald. This black hole "kept the Oswald files away from the spot we would expect them to go-the Soviet Russia division." (p. 27)

Another thing the author finds puzzling about this early file is that he could find no trace of a security investigation about the danger of Oswald's defection. This is really odd because while talking to some of his friends the author found out that Oswald knew something that very few people did: the U-2 was also flying over China. If Snyder's original memo said that Oswald had threatened to give up secrets on radar operation to the Russians, and Oswald had been stationed at the U-2 base in Japan, there should have been a thorough security investigation as to what Oswald could have given the Russians. For the obvious reason that the program could be adjusted to avoid any counterattack based upon that relayed information. Newman could find no evidence of such an inquiry. (pgs 28,33-34) Further, the author found out that Oswald was actually part of a unit called Detachment C, which seemed to almost follow the U-2 around to crisis spots in the Far East, like Indonesia. (p. 42)

Needless to say, after Oswald defected, the second U-2 flight over Russia--with Gary Powers on board--was shot down. Powers felt that, "Oswald's work with the new MPS 16 height-finding radar looms large" in that event. (p. 43) The author segues here to this question: Whatever the CIA did or did not do in regard to this important question, it should have been a routine part of the Warren Commission inquiry. It was not. As the author notes, "When called to testify at the Warren Commission hearings, Oswald's marine colleagues were not questioned about the U-2." (p. 43) Oswald's commander in the Far East, John Donovan, was ready to discuss the issue in depth. The Commission was not. In fact, Donovan was briefed in advance not to fall off topic. (p. 45) When it was over, Donovan had to ask, "Don't you want to know anything about the U-2." He even asked a friend of his who had testified: "Did they ask you about the U-2?" And he said, "No, not a thing." (Ibid) Donovan revealed that the CIA did not question him about the U-2 until December of 1963. But this was probably a counter-intelligence strategy, to see whom he had talked to and what he had revealed. Why is that a distinct probability? Because right after Powers was shot down, the CIA closed its U-2 operations at Atsugi. Yet, Powers did not fly out of Atsugi. As Newman notes, the only link between Powers and Atsugi was Oswald. (p. 46)

Right after this U-2 episode, Newman notes another oddity. The CIA did not open a 201 file on Oswald for over a year after his defection, on 12/8/60. (p. 47) This gap seriously puzzled the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Investigator Dan Hardway called CI officer Ann Egerter about it. It was a short conversation. She didn't want to discuss it. (p. 48) The HSCA tried to neuter the issue by studying other defector cases. But as Newman notes: defection is legal but espionage, like giving up the secrets to the U-2, is not. (pgs 49-50) So the comparison was faulty. In fact, when Egerter finally opened Oswald's 201 file, the defection was noted, but his knowledge of the U-2 wasn't. This delay in opening the 201 file was so unusual that the HSCA asked former CIA Director Richard Helms about it. His reply was vintage Helms: "I am amazed. Are you sure there wasn't? ... .I can't explain that." (p. 51) When the HSCA asked where the documents were prior to the opening of the 201 file, the CIA replied they were never classified higher than confidential and therefore were no longer in existence. Newman notes that this is a lie. Many were classified as "Secret" and he found most of them, so they were not destroyed. Further, the ones that were classified as confidential are still around also. (p. 52)

And this is where one of the most fascinating discoveries in the book is revealed. Although no 201 file was opened on Oswald until December of 1960, he was put on the Watch List in November of 1959. This list was part of the CIA's illegal HT/LINGUAL mail intercept program-only about 300 people were on it. Recall, this is at a time when Oswald's file is in the so-called Black Hole. It was not possible to find a paper trail on him until the next month. How could he, at the same time, be so inconsequential as to have no file opened, yet so important as to be on the quite exclusive Watch List? This defies comprehension. In fact, Newman is forced to conclude, "The absence of a 201 file was a deliberate act, not an oversight." (p. 54) Clearly, someone at the CIA knew who Oswald was and thought it was important enough to intercept his mail. Long ago, when I asked Newman to explain this paradox in light of the fact that his first file would be opened at CI/SIG, he replied that one possibility was Oswald was being run as an off the books agent by Angleton. In light of the other factors mentioned in this section, i.e. concerning the U-2 secrets, the "black hole" delay, plus what we will discover later, I know of no better way to explain this dichotomy.

Edited September 11, 2014 by Steven Gaal

[Thomas Graves]

Dear Pedantic-Like-A-Professor,

Where did I say I thought Oswald was a Communist?

--Tommy

It's implicit, Tommy, in your suggestion that Oswald "snitched" on the JFK Kill Team to the USSR, so that he could go live in the USSR and escape the American right-wing.

That's obvious to many of us, I'm sure -- not just to me.

Regards,

--Paul Trejo

Dear Pedantic-As-A-Professor Trejo,

I think Oswald probably wanted to "get out of Dodge," and maybe that's why he went to Mexico City-- to try to trade information about "The Plot" for financial assistance and free, quick passage to Cuba or Russia.

Does that necessarily make young, naiive, emotional (your words) Lee Harvey Oswald a Communist?

I don't think so.

--Tommy

Edited September 12, 2014 by Thomas Graves

[Thomas Graves]

Dear As-Pedantic-As-A-Professor Trejo,

Where did I say I thought Oswald was a Communist?

--Tommy

It's implicit, Tommy, in your suggestion that Oswald "snitched" on the JFK Kill Team to the USSR, so that he could go live in the USSR and escape the American right-wing.

That's obvious to many of us, I'm sure -- not just to me.

Regards,

--Paul Trejo

Dear As-Pedantic-As-A-Professor Trejo,

Oswald probably wanted to "get out of Dodge," and maybe that's why he went to Mexico City-- to try to trade information about "The Plot" for financial assistance and free, quick passage to Cuba or Russia.

Does that necessarily make young, naiive, emotional (your words) Lee Harvey Oswald a Communist?

I don't think so.

Heck, young, naiive, emotional "I-Led-Three-Lives" Oswald might even have imagined himself back in Russia doing some more spying for the good ol' U.S.A.!

--Tommy

Edited September 11, 2014 by Thomas Graves

[Paul Trejo]

Dear As-Pedantic-As-A-Professor Trejo,

Oswald probably wanted to "get out of Dodge," and maybe that's why he went to Mexico City-- to try to trade information about "The Plot" for financial assistance and free, quick passage to Cuba or Russia.

Does that necessarily make young, naiive, emotional (your words) Lee Harvey Oswald a Communist?

I don't think so.

Heck, young, naiive, emotional "I-Led-Three-Lives" Oswald might even have imagined himself back in Russia doing some more spying for the good ol' U.S.A.!

--Tommy

Well, Tommy, I think you're reaching beyond reaching, now. It's not a game of speculation -- we have facts, we have testimonies, we have the research of Jim Garrison (first and foremost) and we know a lot about Lee Harvey Oswald now.

The fact that the FPCC in New Orleans was fake is important. The fact that the fake FPCC in New Orleans, allegedly led by Lee Oswald, was really controlled by Guy Banister, is also important.

The fact that Oswald pursues this fake FPCC starting in May 1963 (only weeks after he shot at Ex-General Walker) and continued it until September 1963, is also important.

These facts tell us quite a lot about Lee Harvey Oswald -- and we owe these insights to Jim Garrison's research, 1966-1968.

The person who first told Jim Garrison about this was Jack S. Martin, an employee of Guy Banister. Then, David Ferrie, another employee of Guy Banister, confirmed this information for Jim Garrison.

With this breach in the JFK murder conspiracy, Jim Garrison almost single-handedly solved the JFK murder case. Sadly, Jim Garrison failed to distinguish between the Kill Team (the US right-wing) and the Cover-up Team (the FBI and US Government), so when the Cover-up Team slammed into Jim Garrison, he ended up blaming the US Government for the whole mess.

That was a major failing of Jim Garrison -- but even that cannot erase the brilliant work that Jim Garrison did by uncovering the fact that Guy Banister was the leader of the JFK Kill-Team in New Orleans.

Jim Garrison, in my opinion, also failed to learn the full identity of the JFK Kill-Team in Dallas, because he was hoping that somebody in Dallas would step forward to help him. Only DPD Officer Roger Craig tried that, and he died young. Otherwise, nobody in Dallas stepped forward.

That's where we are today, IMHO. We are still waiting for somebody from Dallas, Texas with more first-hand knowledge about the JFK Kill Team in Dallas to step forward.

I think Ricky White brought forward some vital facts -- for one thing, the fact that his father, a right-wing activist and a DPD Officer, allegedly confessed to being one of the JFK shooters at Dealey Plaza, and further, had in his possession a photo of Lee Harvey Oswald holding his weapons -- IN A POSE THAT NOBODY ELSE HAD SEEN BEFORE.

Yet because Ricky White was so late in coming out, and because his father's alleged diary was missing -- researchers too quickly lost interest. I think we should have pursued Roscoe White much more energetically.

Dallas is where we need to start digging, IMHO, if we want to complete the work that Jim Garrison started, and failed to complete.

Regards,

--Paul Trejo

Edited September 12, 2014 by Paul Trejo

[Steven Gaal]

According to Larry Hancock, the author of Someone Would Have Talked, just before his death Phillips told Kevin Walsh, an investigator with the House Select Committee on Assassinations: "My final take on the assassination is there was a conspiracy, likely including American intelligence officers." (Some books wrongly quote Phillips as saying: "My private opinion is that JFK was done in by a conspiracy, likely including rogue American intelligence people.")

========

http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKphillips.htm

Fabian Escalante, Cuban Officials and JFK Historians Conference (7th December, 1995)

In the late 1980's we came into contact with an informant who had known Phillips and who had contact with Phillips in 1958-59. This person told us about three Cubans who had had contact with Phillips at this time. (Juan) Manuel Salvat, Isidro Borja and Antonio Veciana... That is something our agent informed us of. We did a spoken picture of this Harold Benson as we do always. But we didn't know really know who he was. In 1972, this CIA official had an interview with our agent. Our agent at that time had a different case official. But this man came as a.... as a leader, as a boss or something. Had an interview with our agent. This interview was... took place in Mexico they were just having a few drinks. In between, Kennedy's name came into the conversation they were talking about... into the conversation, not Kennedy came to, into... So when the subject comes up this character explains to our agent that after Kennedy's death, he visited his grave and peed on it and said he (JFK) was a communist and such and such. We still didn't know who Harold Benson was but when Claudia Furiati did her research, among the people we interviewed was this agent. We showed him a group of photographs. Plus we already knew about David Phillips. I'm speaking of 1992 and 1993. And the photograph that we showed him was a photograph of David Phillips. And so he pointed out as Harold Benson.

==

James DiEugenio

, review of Larry Hancock's

Someone Would Have Talked

(March, 2008)

I had a similar problem with the following chapter on David Phillips. And it started right on the first page (159). Hancock writes, "Phillips was without a doubt a CIA general." If we consider that word in its normal sense, with normal examples e.g. Eisenhower, Schwarzkopf etc. then I don't understand it. At the time frame of the JFK assassination, Phillips was an operations officer. A man in the field supervising things getting done and done right. Not a guy behind the lines planning and approving the overall campaign. In his fine book A Death in Washington Don Freed quotes CIA Director Bill Colby (p. 81) as calling Phillips a great operations officer. So if we go by Colby's rather authoritative account, Phillips was really a Lt. Colonel at the time -- parallel to someone like Oliver North in the Iran/Contra scandal. Hancock then goes further. He applies this same spurious hierarchical title -- "general" -- to Dave Morales. Yet Morales was Chief of Staff to Ted Shackley at JM/WAVE during this period. I would not even apply the word "general" to Shackley at the time, let alone Morales. Or if I did, it would at most be Brigadier General, not a starred one. It was their superiors at Langley, e.g. James Angleton, who were the generals. People like Phillips and Morales were implementers. (Hancock devotes an entire chapter to Morales. Which is part and parcel of the hubbub that has attended the research community since Gaeton Fonzi introduced him in The Last Investigation. As I noted in my review of the documentary RFK Must Die this has reached the point of actually -- and unsuccessfully -- implicating him in the murder of Robert Kennedy.)

Hancock uses Philips' own autobiography The Night Watch for much of the background material on the man. He then uses one of his timelines to take us up to the famous Bishop/Phillips masquerade episode with Antonio Veciana. But surprisingly, he leaves out some of the most intriguing points about Phillips in Mexico City. Especially his work on the fraudulent tapes sent to Washington to implicate Oswald in the JFK case. For instance, Hancock does not even mention the role of Anne Goodpasture, Phillips' assistant in Mexico City. There is some extraordinary material on her in the HSCA's Lopez Report. Neither does he mention the utterly fascinating evidence that John Armstrong advances in his book Harvey and Lee.

Namely that Phillips sent the dubiously transcribed Mexico City tapes of Oswald by pouch to himself at Langley under an assumed name. Why would he do such a thing? Well, maybe so that no officers but he and Goodpasture would have the tapes from their origin in Mexico City to their arrival at CIA HQ.

This mini-conspiracy was blown in two ways. First, when FBI officials heard the tapes as part of their Kennedy murder investigation and concurred that they were not of Oswald. Second, when HSCA first counsel Richard Sprague showed the official transcripts of the tapes to the original Mexico City transcriber. The transcriber replied that what was on those transcripts was not what he recalled translating. It seems odd to me that these very important points would be left out of any contemporary discussion of Phillips. Even more so since Hancock goes into the Mexico City episode less than a hundred pages later (pgs 275-282).