Records release regarding intercepted messages

[Paul Brancato]

1 hour ago, Jim Hargrove said:

Gene,

Have you ever seen a reproduction of Dinkin's actual 10/16/63 letter to RFK?  I'd LOVE to read it but so far can't locate a copy.

Jim - I think we only have Dinkins word on that, which is why I wish someone with access to RFK Jr. would alert him to the possibility this letter exists in his father's letters somewhere unnoticed. Possible he knows and has looked for it. But it's worth a try. Sure would be a smoking gun.

[Steve Thomas]

Just as an aside; according to the organizational chart, the 564th MP Co. was subordinate to the 529th Ordnance. I figure if Dinkin got in trouble at Massweiler, the MP's probably would have heard about it.

 

Steve Thomas

[Jim Hargrove]

3 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

Jim - I think we only have Dinkins word on that, which is why I wish someone with access to RFK Jr. would alert him to the possibility this letter exists in his father's letters somewhere unnoticed. Possible he knows and has looked for it. But it's worth a try. Sure would be a smoking gun.

There is a 17-page printed timeline in the JA collection at Baylor that mentions Dinkin twice.  The most interesting entry is this:

“October 22: Army code breaker Eugene Dinkin writes Robert Kennedy from France about military plot against JFK, soon goes AWOL to offer warning at various embassies.”

The 10/16 vs 10/22 dates might simply be an error, but could it also be an indication that someone in RFK’s office acknowledged the 10/16 letter mailed from France six days later?

Don’t know who composed the timeline (it doesn’t look like John’s work to me), but it can be seen here:

http://digitalcollections.baylor.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/po-arm/id/4259/rec/4

 

[David Andrews]

18 minutes ago, Jim Hargrove said:

There is a 17-page printed timeline in the JA collection at Baylor that mentions Dinkin twice.  The most interesting entry is this:

“October 22: Army code breaker Eugene Dinkin writes Robert Kennedy from France about military plot against JFK, soon goes AWOL to offer warning at various embassies.”

The 10/16 vs 10/22 dates might simply be an error, but could it also be an indication that someone in RFK’s office acknowledged the 10/16 letter mailed from France six days later?

Don’t know who composed the timeline (it doesn’t look like John’s work to me), but it can be seen here:

http://digitalcollections.baylor.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/po-arm/id/4259/rec/4

 

I have to double-check, but I believe that timeline is from the back matter of Dick Russell's book on Richard Case Nagell, The Man Who Knew Too Much.   I think Russell has a short chapter on Dinkin in the second edition.  Later I'll see what Russell's source is for the October 22 1963 letter from Dinkin to RFK and report back.

 

Edited July 24, 2018 by David Andrews

[Jim Hargrove]

Thanks, David.  You’re right.  In my 1992 first edition of TMWKTM (don’t know if there were other editions) the “Timeline of Primary Events” goes from pp. 713-729.

On p. 553, Mr. Russell wrote:

It began on October 22, 1963, when Dinkin writes that he mailed a letter to Attorney General Robert Kennedy.

Dinkin said,

I did offer in this letter a warning that an attempt to assassinate President Kennedy would occur on November 28th, 1963....

But it appears that, as Paul Brancato said above, so far we only have Mr. Dinkin's word on that.  In TMWKTM, the Dinkin section is immediately followed by a discussion of OAS and Souetre.

Edited July 24, 2018 by Jim Hargrove

[Gene Kelly]

We have several corroborations (independently) that the first letter existed, and was sent, as documented by:

• CIA Cable No. 56631," November 7, 1963 from Geneva Station to Washington - first alert on Dinkin
• On March 4, 1964, Lieutenant Colonel W. L. Adams, Jr., Assist and Chief of Staff, G-2, furnished the following: Captain Howard C. Cowen, assigned to the United States Army Depot at Metz, France, advised on February 18, 1964, that during the evening of November 22, 1963, he conversed with an acquaintance named Dennis De Witt. During the conversation, De Witt said that a friend of his, Eugene Dinkin, had predicted the assassination
• His military associates including those named by Dinkin in his FBI interviews: PFC Dennis De Witt, PFC Larry Pulles, Sgt. Walter Reynolds, and R. Thomas.

 

[Gene Kelly]

Were Dennis De Witt or Larry Pulles ever subsequently interviewed?  Both of them were apparently aware of the first letter to the Attorney General.   If I have the story straight, it was De Witt whose name was on the envelope as a return address (as Dinkin was concerned it would be intercepted) and Pulles who actually mailed the letter.  They could corroborate its existence.

Regarding the cryptographic work, interviews of Garrison investigator William C. Wood (aka Bill Boxley) were conducted by one George E. Rennar (accompanied by Mary Ferrell) in 1971.  Boxley (designated as "B" below) was interviewed in Dallas on August 30, 31 and September 3, 1971.  Most of the interviews focused on allegations made by others against Boxley, who was former CIA (allegedly left due to a drinking problem) and was one of several individuals who had infiltrated the Garrison investigation.  Garrison eventually had a falling out with Boxley, who jumped ship and ended up working on Clay Shaw’s defense team.  I recall some separate correspondence that Steve Thomas provided, indicating that Boxley had previously interviewed Dinkin in Brooklyn for Garrison, and described him as a bit nutty (he had 10 dogs). Boxley had some interesting comments to make about Eugene Dinkin :

B says it is a very interesting story, including how DINKIN turned up in New York. B's basic reaction in that DINKIN's "paranoia" deserves a second look. For one thing, they do not take people like DINKIN into crypto work, the importance of which is second only to nuclear topics. He was in Europe handling coded Algerian traffic, when he came rushing into the next room saying that the President was going to be killed in Dallas. B also thinks he named the date. He was taken to a military hospital under heavy guard after he told his Captain about his intercept. Then, unprecedentedly, he was taken to Walter Reed Hospital two days later. B says the lead 'came from a DINKIN acquaintance at Ft. Hood. B talked to a Killien boy who provided him with the present whereabouts of the members of DINKIN's unit. Basically, they were military police. DINKIN took a polygraph in Chicago and has the results with him. B feels that he has been gotten to and is now just parroting a false story.

 

 

[Steve Thomas]

1 hour ago, Gene Kelly said:

 I recall some separate correspondence that Steve Thomas provided, indicating that Boxley had previously interviewed Dinkin in Brooklyn for Garrison, and described him as a bit nutty (he had 10 dogs).

B says the lead 'came from a DINKIN acquaintance at Ft. Hood. B talked to a Killien boy who provided him with the present whereabouts of the members of DINKIN's unit. Basically, they were military police.

 

 

Gene,

 

I'm sorry, that is not ringing a bell for me.

"B talked to a Killien boy who provided him with the present whereabouts of the members of DINKIN's unit. Basically, they were military police."

 

This would take you back to the 564th MP Co. in Massweiler that I referenced earleir.

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

 

Steve Thomas

[Gene Kelly]

Steve

In a November 10, 2017 EF thread on Dinkin, you responded to Steve Hume with the following:

Here's a copy of the relevant pages from that New Orleans research conference. If they don't show up here as attached file, I'll try to copy and paste them.

Dinkin Garrrison Papers New Orleans Conference 9 21 1968 Pages 73 to 75.pdf

This captures a conversation amongst Garrison investigators (in September 1968) where Bill Boxley indicated that he interviewed Dinkin in Brooklyn NYC, and - while he seemed a bit crazy - Boxley thought that there was something to Dinkin's story.  Boxley indicates that the Stars and Stripes explanation is a cover story that Dinkin "memorized" (i.e. 'they got to him') and that he had actually been monitoring OAS cable traffic, when he came upon the plot. Boxley believes that Dinkin was credible, and had been an NSA cipher clerk with significant clearance.  

Gene

 

 

Steve Thomas

[Steve Thomas]

5 hours ago, Gene Kelly said:

Steve

In a November 10, 2017 EF thread on Dinkin, you responded to Steve Hume with the following:

Here's a copy of the relevant pages from that New Orleans research conference. If they don't show up here as attached file, I'll try to copy and paste them.

Dinkin Garrrison Papers New Orleans Conference 9 21 1968 Pages 73 to 75.pdf

This captures a conversation amongst Garrison investigators (in September 1968) where Bill Boxley indicated that he interviewed Dinkin in Brooklyn NYC, and - while he seemed a bit crazy - Boxley thought that there was something to Dinkin's story.  Boxley indicates that the Stars and Stripes explanation is a cover story that Dinkin "memorized" (i.e. 'they got to him') and that he had actually been monitoring OAS cable traffic, when he came upon the plot. Boxley believes that Dinkin was credible, and had been an NSA cipher clerk with significant clearance.  

Gene

 

 

Steve Thomas

Gene,

 

Thank you so much. I had mistakenly deleted the original email the National Archives had sent me, and it got saved in some kind of temp\users\blah, blah, blah subdirectory. I haven't been able to find it again and have been disconsolate ever since.

 

I didn't know the "Box" in the transcript of this New Orleans Conference was this person Boxley (or Woods).

I would say this. In this transcript, "Box" says that, "Dinkin was a cipher clerk for NSA." I'm not sure where he got this.

Dinkin claimed to be a "cryptographic operator" with a Top Secret security clearance. Without seeing his service record, I can't know if that was Dinkin's MOS, or Military Occupational Specialty. but The 529^th Ordnance Co.,  as part of the 71^st. Ordnance Group, did do nuclear weapons assembly work under the Advanced Weapons Support Command (AWSCOM) which was activated in March, 1959. There were crytographic operators working with those units in the 71^st who held Top Secret clearances.

His service number starts with RA, which is Regular Army. He wouldn't necessarily have to be with the NSA, or even the ASA (Army Security Agency) to be doing cryptographic work.

 

Thank you again for your help.

 

Steve Thomas

[Gene Kelly]

Steve

If you ready the Garrison transcript closely, it seems that Boxley (William Wood) interviewed Dinkin ... that is what fascinates me here, that he actually spoke to him in Brooklyn in 1968.  I believe that this is where he gets the cipher clerk ('crypto work') legend from.  Several Forum members have been asking how/where Garrison got the Dinkin/OAS connection from; I think it originated from Boxley's conversation with Eugene Dinkin.  If you read the February 2018 Ronald Redmond article in Kennedy's and King, Eugene Dinkin comes across as an intelligent and responsible individual ... portrayed as an idealist (and a bit paranoid), a social worker with a degree in psychology from Chicago University.  I could envision the Army training him in cryptographic duties, and he did have a secret clearance of some level.  I get the impression that Dinkin was smart enough to avoid any direct discussion of what he actually did, or how he came to discover the plot, as him making that information public would be a felony and grounds for imprisonment ... so, he therefore put together the story of psychological "message sets"  from military publications such as Stars and Stripes. Dinkin later told the FBI that it was his study of these "psychological sets" which revealed to him both an anti-Kennedy bias as well as a military plot in the works.  Boxley believed that these were essentially a cover story.  It appears that using these public documents was a way for him to avoid any legal complications or retaliation by the Department of Defense, although he remained persistent in his protests in the 1970's.  Curiously (but not surprisingly), Dinkin disavowed seeing any such traffic in a February 23, 1977 letter to  HSCA member Jacqueline Hess, wherein he provided 23 exhibits ("media demonstrations") as evidence:

He noted to Hess that he had never decoded any illicit cryptographic message that appeared to relate to the JFK assassination.

I would not characterize Eugene Dinkin as unbalanced; rather, he seems careful and intelligent. Boxley himself was interviewed in September 1971 and told his interviewers (Rennar and Mary Ferrell):

B says it is a very interesting story, including how DINKIN turned up in New York. B's basic reaction in that DINKIN's "paranoia" deserves a second look.  For one thing, they do not take people like DINKIN into crypto work, the importance of which is second only to nuclear topics. He was in Europe handling coded Algerian traffic, when he came rushing into the next room saying that the President was going to be killed in Dallas. 

Gene

[Jim Hargrove]

It is important to keep in mind that Boxley/Wood was a plant meant to disrupt and mislead the Garrison investigation.  As Jim DiEugenio wrote....

A final CIA-related penetration also occurred at this time in the figure of William Wood/Bill Boxley. Boxley was responsible for injecting all manner of disinformation into Garrison’s office, from his fingering of Nancy Perrin Rich’s husband as the grassy knoll assassin, to his wild goose chase involving Edgar Eugene Bradley, and his mediation of the Farewell America hoax, whose main sponsor Harold Weisberg discovered to be Philippe de Vosjoli, a double agent who worked for Angleton.  Aside from this waste of valuable time and resources, this low point in Garrison’s investigation is both sad and comically absurd [278-283].

[Steve Thomas]

1 hour ago, Gene Kelly said:

Steve

If you ready the Garrison transcript closely, it seems that Boxley (William Wood) interviewed Dinkin ... that is what fascinates me here, that he actually spoke to him in Brooklyn in 1968.  I believe that this is where he gets the cipher clerk ('crypto work') legend from.  Several Forum members have been asking how/where Garrison got the Dinkin/OAS connection from; I think it originated from Boxley's conversation with Eugene Dinkin.   Curiously (but not surprisingly), Dinkin disavowed seeing any such traffic in a February 23, 1977 letter to  HSCA member Jacqueline Hess, wherein he provided 23 exhibits ("media demonstrations") as evidence:

He noted to Hess that he had never decoded any illicit cryptographic message that appeared to relate to the JFK assassination.

In his 1977 letter to Hess, Dinkin told Hess that he had Top Secret and Crypto security clearances. See p. 14:

http://digitalcollections.baylor.edu/utils/getfile/collection/po-arm/id/23494/filename/23490.pdfpage/page/14

Curiously, in that same passage about not having decoded any "illicit cryptographic" messages, Dinkin also said that his security clearances "were revoked at the time as "Operation Seaflow" messages were going across the teletype lines."  I've looked for any references to "Operation Seaflow", and haven't found any.

Have you ever heard of that? (I even looked for other spellings like Seafloat, or Seaflo.

 

If you read the accounts of service members in other Ordnance Groups in Germany at the time, like the 57th, or 59th; several of them held Top Security clearances.

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

At this time, I do not doubt that Dinkin did as well.

 

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.

 

Steve Thomas

 

 

 

[James DiEugenio]

Jim:

 

Its true that Boxley was an infiltrator into Garrisons' office.  But this particular interview with Rennar was done years later as I recall. Plus if you remember, Mary Ferrell was off on the far right politically, so Rennar probably was also.  Therefore Boxley was probably being frank. For instance, in that interview Boxley was the first insider to actually expose the anti Garrison operation at CIA.  Which included what he called a "Garrison desk".

So I tend to think this is probably candid.

 

 

[Steve Thomas]

The information being provided by Boxley on the munitions (from the Houma raid?) being destined for the OAS, was not coming from him based on first-hand knowledge, but as second-hand information possibly coming coming from a Hugh Ward, or Jerry Milton Brooks.

 

 

This an interesting website that contains info on Hugh Ward

https://isgp-studies.com/DL_1964_05_23_Hugh_Ward_Guy_Banister_associate_airplane_crash

This website also contains part of a January, 1968 Ramparts article by William Turner on the Garrison investigation that mentions Hugh Ward. In Turner's article, he also talks about the CMC and Permindex.

 

Steve Thomas

 

Steve Thomas

Edited April 23, 2021 by Steve Thomas