Records release regarding intercepted messages

[Cory Santos]

https://www.newnationalist.net/2018/07/14/newly-released-jfk-files-reveal-us-military-intercepted-coded-messages-about-assassination-plot/

[Paul Brancato]

10 hours ago, Cory Santos said:

https://www.newnationalist.net/2018/07/14/newly-released-jfk-files-reveal-us-military-intercepted-coded-messages-about-assassination-plot/

Cory - help me out. I looked at all this material, and the linked documents. Then I tried to ascertain the bonafides of the New Nationalist and the three journalists associated with this online publication. I’m not penetrating the veil. What got me started was the misleading summary of Eugene Dinkin’s possible foreknowledge. I am of the personal opinion that his story is extremely important, but I’ve never seen a document where he names individuals. I would dearly love to see Garrison’s evidence on Dinkin. Any idea where I could find his source? 

I really hope others jump in here. Who funds the New Nationalist? Who are the three journalists? It’s at least clear that one of them, Torchy Blane, is a pseudonym, and judging from the lack of search results the other two are probably too - Thomas Muller and Russ Winter. 

Edited July 17, 2018 by Paul Brancato

[B. A. Copeland]

Hey Paul have you ever heard, by chance, on Len Osanic’s show (can’t recall which one, sorry) where a Canadian military official is mentioned who basically heard some rather interesting things from US military officials during that time? I thought Len mentioned that he wanted to contact the Canadian official but I’m not sure if he was successful. This seemed like, at the very least, an interesting lead if true.

[Paul Brancato]

5 hours ago, B. A. Copeland said:

Hey Paul have you ever heard, by chance, on Len Osanic’s show (can’t recall which one, sorry) where a Canadian military official is mentioned who basically heard some rather interesting things from US military officials during that time? I thought Len mentioned that he wanted to contact the Canadian official but I’m not sure if he was successful. This seemed like, at the very least, an interesting lead if true.

I like what I’ve heard from Len Osanic, but difficult to use the show as a research tool for exactly the reason you gave. I haven’t heard this one. What else do you recall? 

[Michaleen Kilroy]

12 hours ago, B. A. Copeland said:

Hey Paul have you ever heard, by chance, on Len Osanic’s show (can’t recall which one, sorry) where a Canadian military official is mentioned who basically heard some rather interesting things from US military officials during that time? I thought Len mentioned that he wanted to contact the Canadian official but I’m not sure if he was successful. This seemed like, at the very least, an interesting lead if true.

The story is told on this Canadian broadcast starting about 3:30 in:

The JFK Files : The Murder of a President - The Fifth Estate

 

[Jim Hargrove]

On 7/17/2018 at 11:31 AM, Paul Brancato said:

I would dearly love to see Garrison’s evidence on Dinkin. Any idea where I could find his source? 

At least some of Garrison’s material on Dinkin, including a hand-written three page letter from his mother also claiming he had prior knowledge of the assassination, can be read and downloaded from the John Armstrong Collection at Baylor University:  CLICK HERE.

[Richard Price]

Having looked at the letter mentioned above and not being very familiar with the Dinkin story, I am a little confused.  If his mother were attempting to forewarn President Kennedy of the attempt on his life, as her son had also done, why is her letter dated December of 1963 and addressed to the president who had been dead for some weeks at this point?

[Paul Brancato]

1 hour ago, Richard Price said:

Having looked at the letter mentioned above and not being very familiar with the Dinkin story, I am a little confused.  If his mother were attempting to forewarn President Kennedy of the attempt on his life, as her son had also done, why is her letter dated December of 1963 and addressed to the president who had been dead for some weeks at this point?

Richard - I believe Dinkin’s mother is writing to Robert Kennedy. I’ve also read that Dinkin claimed he had done likewise. I wish someone here had RFK Jr.’s ear. Maybe he has not heard this story, has not looked through his father’s letters, which surely must be housed somewhere he has access to. 

 

2 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

At least some of Garrison’s material on Dinkin, including a hand-written three page letter from his mother also claiming he had prior knowledge of the assassination, can be read and downloaded from the John Armstrong Collection at Baylor University:  CLICK HERE.

Thanks Jim. The letter from Mrs. Dinkin is new for me. I am pretty sure I’ve read that Garrison had info not actually verified in these PDF’s from the Armstrong collection. No where in CIA files do I see mention of Dinkin monitoring OAS communications. I have seen a CIA doc somewhere that says that Dinkin first went to the US embassy in Luxembourg with his warning, then went back to Metz before he went AWOL to Geneva. 

[Steve Thomas]

4 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

At least some of Garrison’s material on Dinkin, including a hand-written three page letter from his mother also claiming he had prior knowledge of the assassination, can be read and downloaded from the John Armstrong Collection at Baylor University:  CLICK HERE.

Jim,

 

That's the first time I've ever seen reference to a Russian embassy visit.

 

Steve Thomas

[Steve Thomas]

 

There is a record of a 529^th Ordnance Company. They were part of the 71^st Ordnance Group, and were based in Massweiler, Germany.

European Theater Ordnance Units & Activities, 1945 - 1989

https://www.usarmygermany.com/Sont.htm?https&&&www.usarmygermany.com/Units/Ordnance/USAREUR_Ordnance%20Troop%20List.htm

 

Steve Thomas

[Steve Thomas]

19 minutes ago, Steve Thomas said:

 

There is a record of a 529^th Ordnance Company. They were part of the 71^st Ordnance Group, and were based in Massweiler, Germany.

European Theater Ordnance Units & Activities, 1945 - 1989

https://www.usarmygermany.com/Sont.htm?https&&&www.usarmygermany.com/Units/Ordnance/USAREUR_Ordnance%20Troop%20List.htm

 

Steve Thomas

This a very, very interesting web page. It's a brief history of the 71st Ordnance Group:

https://www.usarmygermany.com/Sont.htm?https&&&www.usarmygermany.com/Units/Ordnance/USAREUR_Ordnance%20Troop%20List.htm

 

Source: Email from Ed Donohue, 71st Ord Gp/AWSCOM, 1958-62)

1958:

"I enjoyed the TDY missions to various NATO installations, First French Army, British units and German units that worked with our U.S. weapons team. We ran convoys for the different units, 583rd (Ord Co) at Dahn, 529th (Ord Co) at Massweiler, 64th (Ord Co) at Fischbach. There were many convoys that year. It was very exciting being part of these convoys. MP teams were used to protect the missions and we were always heavily armed, carrying white phosphorus blocks to protect and if needed destroy secret crypto equipment and documents if we were placed in that position. NSA regulated our activities in regard to classified communications. Some trips took us close to the Iron Curtain. The best part was returning to base using many different routes to confuse any adversary Intel units.

(Email from Tom Probst, HQ AWSCOM, 1959-61)

1959:

"I was at HQ AWSCOM in Pirmasens from Feb 59 to Feb 61. At that time we stored nuclear warheads for the 7th Army. We had many units under our command that worked with the (special) weapons. I was a top secret documents clerk. We also had an MP unit that guarded the third floor of HQ building which was highly classified; by today's standards, the security was very poor. I guess you know our mission, we controlled the nuclear warheads for USAREUR. Our troops had restricted travel in Europe because of our mission."

(Source: Email from Joe Phillips, 82nd Ord Bn and 541st Sig Co, 1958-1960)

1958

https://www.usarmygermany.com/Sont.htm?https&&&www.usarmygermany.com/Units/Ordnance/USAREUR_Ordnance%20Troop%20List.htm

 

"Massweiler was more of the “James Bond” security post than any other I’d been associated with. There, it seemed to be pretty serious stuff. I read in one of our associate’s emails that security seemed a bit lax compared to what we see now in the films. I would agree except for the Massweiler post. By the way my recollection of Zweibrucken was eclectic. Stationed on our post was a U.S. Air Force unit. About a half mile away there was a West German basic training command. And in or near Zweibrucken were elements of the First French Army and a Canadian Air Force unit. Very NATO."

 

Steve Thomas

 

[Paul Brancato]

41 minutes ago, Steve Thomas said:

This a very, very interesting web page. It's a brief history of the 71st Ordnance Group:

https://www.usarmygermany.com/Sont.htm?https&&&www.usarmygermany.com/Units/Ordnance/USAREUR_Ordnance%20Troop%20List.htm

 

Source: Email from Ed Donohue, 71st Ord Gp/AWSCOM, 1958-62)

1958:

"I enjoyed the TDY missions to various NATO installations, First French Army, British units and German units that worked with our U.S. weapons team. We ran convoys for the different units, 583rd (Ord Co) at Dahn, 529th (Ord Co) at Massweiler, 64th (Ord Co) at Fischbach. There were many convoys that year. It was very exciting being part of these convoys. MP teams were used to protect the missions and we were always heavily armed, carrying white phosphorus blocks to protect and if needed destroy secret crypto equipment and documents if we were placed in that position. NSA regulated our activities in regard to classified communications. Some trips took us close to the Iron Curtain. The best part was returning to base using many different routes to confuse any adversary Intel units.

(Email from Tom Probst, HQ AWSCOM, 1959-61)

1959:

"I was at HQ AWSCOM in Pirmasens from Feb 59 to Feb 61. At that time we stored nuclear warheads for the 7th Army. We had many units under our command that worked with the (special) weapons. I was a top secret documents clerk. We also had an MP unit that guarded the third floor of HQ building which was highly classified; by today's standards, the security was very poor. I guess you know our mission, we controlled the nuclear warheads for USAREUR. Our troops had restricted travel in Europe because of our mission."

(Source: Email from Joe Phillips, 82nd Ord Bn and 541st Sig Co, 1958-1960)

1958

https://www.usarmygermany.com/Sont.htm?https&&&www.usarmygermany.com/Units/Ordnance/USAREUR_Ordnance%20Troop%20List.htm

 

"Massweiler was more of the “James Bond” security post than any other I’d been associated with. There, it seemed to be pretty serious stuff. I read in one of our associate’s emails that security seemed a bit lax compared to what we see now in the films. I would agree except for the Massweiler post. By the way my recollection of Zweibrucken was eclectic. Stationed on our post was a U.S. Air Force unit. About a half mile away there was a West German basic training command. And in or near Zweibrucken were elements of the First French Army and a Canadian Air Force unit. Very NATO."

 

Steve Thomas

 

Even though I can’t navigate from the two links above to your quotes from 1958, at least I can see that the 529th Ordinance Battalion where Dinkins as posted as part of the 71st Ordinance Group dealt with high security issues. Storing nuclear arsenals and having Military Police on hand to destroy crypto equipment and documents if the need arose. Dinkins says he lost security clearance when he was sent to Metz. But he might very well have been privy to sensitive radio communications at Maßweiler. Interesting conjecture - he really did hear OAS radio traffic, but had to come up with another story when he began his pre and post AWOL attempts to alert authorities in Luxembourg, Frankfurt, Geneva. Somehow Garrison came up with the OAS radio traffic idea, presumably from French sources. 

[Jim Hargrove]

16 hours ago, Steve Thomas said:

This a very, very interesting web page. It's a brief history of the 71st Ordnance Group:

https://www.usarmygermany.com/Sont.htm?https&&&www.usarmygermany.com/Units/Ordnance/USAREUR_Ordnance%20Troop%20List.htm

 

Source: Email from Ed Donohue, 71st Ord Gp/AWSCOM, 1958-62)

1958:

"I enjoyed the TDY missions to various NATO installations, First French Army, British units and German units that worked with our U.S. weapons team. We ran convoys for the different units, 583rd (Ord Co) at Dahn, 529th (Ord Co) at Massweiler, 64th (Ord Co) at Fischbach. There were many convoys that year. It was very exciting being part of these convoys. MP teams were used to protect the missions and we were always heavily armed, carrying white phosphorus blocks to protect and if needed destroy secret crypto equipment and documents if we were placed in that position. NSA regulated our activities in regard to classified communications. Some trips took us close to the Iron Curtain. The best part was returning to base using many different routes to confuse any adversary Intel units.

(Email from Tom Probst, HQ AWSCOM, 1959-61)

1959:

"I was at HQ AWSCOM in Pirmasens from Feb 59 to Feb 61. At that time we stored nuclear warheads for the 7th Army. We had many units under our command that worked with the (special) weapons. I was a top secret documents clerk. We also had an MP unit that guarded the third floor of HQ building which was highly classified; by today's standards, the security was very poor. I guess you know our mission, we controlled the nuclear warheads for USAREUR. Our troops had restricted travel in Europe because of our mission."

(Source: Email from Joe Phillips, 82nd Ord Bn and 541st Sig Co, 1958-1960)

1958

https://www.usarmygermany.com/Sont.htm?https&&&www.usarmygermany.com/Units/Ordnance/USAREUR_Ordnance%20Troop%20List.htm

 

"Massweiler was more of the “James Bond” security post than any other I’d been associated with. There, it seemed to be pretty serious stuff. I read in one of our associate’s emails that security seemed a bit lax compared to what we see now in the films. I would agree except for the Massweiler post. By the way my recollection of Zweibrucken was eclectic. Stationed on our post was a U.S. Air Force unit. About a half mile away there was a West German basic training command. And in or near Zweibrucken were elements of the First French Army and a Canadian Air Force unit. Very NATO."

 

Steve Thomas

 

Interesting, Steve.  If I’m interpreting all this correctly, it suggests that Dinkin at one time seemed sane enough to be stationed among heavily armed nuclear weapons controllers and crypto communications, but that he became so mentally unbalanced after allegedly hearing about a plot to assassinate JFK that, according to his mother, he was sent for a psych evaluation in Landstahl Hospital in Germany and was subsequently under psychiatric observation at Walter Reed.  Ouch!

Kind of reminiscent of those “Lee Harvey Oswald” observers who seemed to develop psychiatric issues.  Immediately coming to mind are DeMohrenschildt, Ralph Leon Yates, and Steven Harris Landesberg, but there may be others I’m forgetting.  

[Gene Kelly]

All

Dinkin’s name first came up in the Garrison investigation, where, like many leads, his name first appeared.  Interviews with some of Dinkin’s former Army associates led to the conclusion that he had been hospitalized until he memorized a cover story.  As Garrison’s people pieced the story together, they discovered that one of Dinkin’s duties as a code breaker had been to decipher telegraphic traffic that originated with the French OAS. 

Author Dick Russell included quite a bit of Dinkin’s information in his book The Man Who Knew Too Much. Noel Twyman also covered some of Dinkin’s story in Bloody Treason. Neither of these writers used the psychological set examples that Dinkin subsequently provided to the HSCA.  Russell obliquely refers to material in publications as part of a cover story that Dinkin came up with to account for where he thought he had learned about the plot. Russell writes that some of the military associates Garrison’s investigators talked to told the DA that while he was hospitalized, Dinkin was made to recite a cover story. This may be because when Garrison dug deeper into Dinkin, he discovered that one of his functions as a code breaker was to decipher messages from the French OAS.  Not sure where this came from or how/who told Garrison, but it resonates since the OAS disliked Kennedy for his alliance with DeGaulle as well as Kennedy’s  advocacy for independence for the French colony of Algeria.  As Henry Hurt later discovered, a member of the OAS (Secret Army Organization) was in Fort Worth the morning of the assassination, and in Dallas that afternoon. He was picked up within 48 hours and expelled back to France.  Researcher Lisa Pease noted that there were allegations that he was NSA, detailed to Army in Europe. See the excellent October 2017 article by Ronald Redmon in Kennedy's and King entitled "Eugene Dinkin, The Saga of an Unsung Hero".

The rumor of a visit to the Soviet Embassy is new.  What is well documented is that on October 25, 1963, Dinkin went to the US Embassy at Luxembourg where, he stated, he attempted to see the Charge d'Affaires, who refused to see him or to review the newspapers and research papers which Dinkin claimed were evidence of the impending assassination. Following this incident, Dinkin was notified by his superiors that he was to undergo psychiatric evaluation on November 5th. Dinkin then went absent without leave , where he attempted to present his story to the editor of the Geneva Diplomat.  Dinkin also spoke to a Newsweek reporter based in Geneva who did not listen to Dinkin's allegations.  He then attempted to contact officials of Time-Life  and succeeded in speaking to the secretary in Zurich.  After these unsuccessful efforts, Dinkin returned to Germany where he gave himself up to the custody of the military, whereupon he was "hospitalized" at Landstuhl General Hospital in a closed psychiatric ward until JFK was killed.

Eugene B. Dinkin was the subject of a closed investigation by the Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, United States Army Communications Zone, Europe.  Dinkin was reassigned to Walter Reed Hospital, Washington D.C., as a patient on December 3rd and was ordered to proceed to that destination on the 4th (apparently skipping typical diagnosis that he was schizophrenic, psychotic, history of depression, delusions of persecution.  There he was given therapy to help him deal with his unfortunate condition of "schizoid-assassination prognostication syndrome".  He was made to understand, that if his condition did not improve, he would undergo electric shock treatment, whereupon his condition dramatically "improved." He was released from Walter Reed Hospital and the U.S. Army on a medical discharge.   Dinkin's described his medical treatment:

I began receiving “therapy” to help me understand that my warning of the assassination had been “coincidental” and represented a projection of hostility toward authority figures in my family and a displacement of my internal conflicts about inability to adjust to military life. In order to “get well” I was to understand that in approaching European ambassadors I was “really looking for attention and assistance to obtain psychiatric treatment.” I was let to understand that if my condition did not improve that I could be treated with electric shock treatment and feigned cooperation and understanding of my unfortunate condition (schizoid-assassination prognostication) and pretended to participate in group therapy and pharmacological treatment (I faked swallowing pills throughout). I was given an injection of a strong drug which left me dazed and was then introduced to a “psychologist from Case Institute of Cleveland” and told that be was conducting a research project requiring my cooperation. I was then required to free associate to a list of words while a tape recorder was in process of recording.”

Gene

[Robert Harper]

Thanks for this great post. I also just recently read in the released documents a letter written by his mother. When I attended the 50th in Dallas, i only asked one question from the audience and it was who knows what happened to Eugene Dinkin?

His story has always haunted. He was one of the Cassandra's of the tragedy. Unlike another who was a heroin addict, drug runner and prostitute, Dinkin was a graduate of the University of Chicago. His mother sounds pretty together also. Poor guy went running places to tell who he thought might pay attention. (Recall the MSU teen gymnasts who just wanted AN adult to step forward?). Last info I could find was that Dinkin had filed a lawsuit against the government, but I never could find anything else. The clip provided about the Canadian military figure - I think on this thread - was also chilling because it was so believable.