Lumpkin, Gannaway, and the DPD-Army Intelligence network

[Ron Bulman]

1 hour ago, Anthony Thorne said:

Crichton's book has been reprinted - in a likely unauthorised edition with a poor cover - and is on Amazon, listed as being written by 'John Crichton'. It's $13 at the Amazon link below. Looking at both the Worldcat and Amazon links, it's a very slender volume, more like an extended essay of 60 pages or so, with another 20 pages of photos and memorabilia from the era.

https://www.amazon.com/REPUBLICAN-DEMOCRAT-POLITICAL-CAMPAIGNS-TEXAS-1964/dp/1418425745

A dedicated aggie in 1963.  The home of such which would become the final resting place of ghwb, as well a his presidential library. 

[Chuck Schwartz]

• Crichton was a key player in the Big Event.  Jack Crichton also had a close association with George H. W. Bush. According to Fabian Escalante (The Secret War: CIA Covert Operations Against Cuba, 1959-62), in 1959, Crichton and Bush raised funds for the CIA's Operation 40. Originally it was set up to organize sabotage operations against Fidel Castro and his Cuban government. However, it evolved into a team of assassins. One member, Frank Sturgis, claimed: "this assassination group (Operation 40) would upon orders, naturally, assassinate either members of the military or the political parties of the foreign country that you were going to infiltrate, and if necessary some of your own members who were suspected of being foreign agents... We were concentrating strictly in Cuba at that particular time."
   
  The failure to assassinate or overthrow Fidel Castro caused tremendous problems for the Cuban-Venezuelan Oil Voting Trust Company and other foreign oil companies that had already invested more than $30 million looking for oil in Cuba. In December 1960, CVOVT was de-listed from the American Stock Exchange.

  Critchton was appointed head of the intelligence component of the Dallas Civil Defence. The conservative radio commentator Paul Harvey wrote in his syndicated column in September 1960: "The Communists, since 1917, have sold Communism to more people than have been told about Christ after 2,000 years." He urged his readers to support the "counter-attack that had been mounted in Dallas."

   
  In 1961 Crichton joined forces with other right-wing figures in Dallas to establish a program called "Know Your Enemy". This was to combat communist influence that "was undermining the American way of life". The following year Crichton opened an underground command post under the patio of the Dallas Health and Science Museum that was intended for "continuity-of-government" operations during a communist attack.

  In 1963 Crichton was nominated by the Republican Party for the post of Governor of Texas. He joined forces with George H. W. Bush, who was the nominee for the U.S. Senate. As Crichton later recalled, he and Bush "spoke from the same podiums" that year. However, Crichton was defeated by John Connally and he later wrote a book about his failed attempt to become governor, The Republican-Democrat Political Campaigns: In Texas in 1964.

   
  In November 1963 Crichton was involved in the arrangements of the visit that President John F. Kennedy made to Dallas. His close friend, Deputy Police Chief George L. Lumpkin, and a fellow member of the the 488th Military Intelligence Detachment, drove the pilot car of Kennedy's motorcade. Also in the car was Lieutenant Colonel George Whitmeyer, commander of all Army Reserve units in East Texas. The pilot car stopped briefly in front of the Texas School Book Depository, where Lumpkin spoke to a policeman controlling traffic at the corner of Houston and Elm.'

   
  In the Warren Commission Report it stated that Crichton arranged for a member of the local Russian community, Ilya Mamantov, to work for the Dallas Police Department as a translator for Russian-born Marina Oswaldshortly after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Crichton's volunteer translated for Oswald during her initial questioning by the Dallas authorities in the hours immediately after her husband Lee Harvey Oswald had been arrested. According to Russ Baker, the author of Family of Secrets (2009), there "were far from literal translations of her Russian words and had the effect of implicating her husband in Kennedy's death."

   
  Crichton was president of Nafco Oil and Gas. He also owned a company called Dorchester Gas Producing. A fellow director was David Harold Byrd who along with Clint Murchison, Haroldson L. Hunt and Sid Richardson, was part of the Big Oil group in Dallas. Barr McClellan (Blood, Money & Power) argues that "Big Oil would be during the fifties and into the sixties what the OPEC oil cartel was to the United States in the seventies and beyond". One of the main concerns of this group was the preservation of the oil depletion allowance.

   
  Jack Crichton who was President of the Dallas Petroleum Engineers Club, also served as a Director to Florida Gas Company, Clark Oil and Refining, Whitehall Corporation, Transco Energy and the Consolidated Development Corporation.

   
  Jack Alston Crichton died in Dallas on 10th December, 2007.
• Also, Crichton went to college with Earle Cabell.

[Steve Thomas]

14 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

So this brings me to Haapanen. Are you able to contact him? My guess is that he was PD Scott’s source. As Steve points out, there is little corroboration, none in military files that Steve has been able to locate. But I see that Haapanen interviewed Whitmeyer. So the details of that interview, and any others that he did, are of major interest. 

 

Paul,

I have looked for this 1970 interview between Larry Haapanen and George Whitmeyer to no avail. This is the closest I have come:

Peter Dale Scott- ‘The JFK assassination as an engineered provocation-deception plot’

November 24, 2010

By Copa

The JFK Assassination as an Engineered Provocation-Deception Plot:Some Military Parallels Between 11/22 and 9/11

Address to COPA, November 2010

Peter Dale Scott

https://archive.politicalassassinations.net/2010/11/peter-dale-scott-the-jfk-assassination-as-an-engineered-provocation-deception-plot/

 

“Researcher Larry Haapanen has discovered the 488th seems to have had its own direct chain of command linking it to Washington. In an esoteric publication entitled The Military Order of World Wars (Turner Publishing Company, 1997, p. 120), he found that Crichton “commanded the 488th MID (Strategic), reporting directly to the Army Chief of Intelligence and the Defense Intelligence Agency.”# And in 1970 Haapanen was told by Crichton’s commander in the Texas Army Reserve, Lt. Col. Whitmeyer, that Crichton’s unit did its summer training at the Pentagon.”

 

Palamara, Vince. Survivor’s Guilt. 2013 edition( Originally published in 2005).

https://books.google.com/books?id=YA4CBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT155&lpg=PT155&dq=1970+%22Larry+Haapanen%22+Whitmeyer&source=bl&ots=A7K7hl4g09&sig=ACfU3U0-53PNS8gUGlprvMty-Y0rEToRiQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjvyJGPs7nkAhVQC6wKHdPrA9YQ6AEwCnoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=1970%20%22Larry%20Haapanen%22%20Whitmeyer&f=false

 

Something that had escaped my notice up until now...

Scott identifies Whitmeyer as "Crichton’s commander in the Texas Army Reserve,..."

He didn't say, "U.S. Army Reserve. He said "Texas Army Reserve".

So, with respect to the 488th, I think we need to be looking for information in the Texas State Guard records at the Texas State Capitol in Austin.

 

Steve Thomas

 

[Jim Hargrove]

The Dallas Morning News (Sunday, May 5, 1963, p. 5)  under the heading “Military Briefs” lists field training encampments for a number of units including the “488th Military Intelligence Detachment, The Pentagon, July 7-21.”

In it’s edition of Tuesday, December 5, 1967, the same newspaper announced Crichton’s retirement from the Army Reserves and listed him as “commanding officer of the 488th Military Intelligence Detachment….”

[Guest]

On 2/19/2019 at 6:34 PM, Steve Thomas said:

There is no record of an interview of Buell Wesley Frazier. There is an affidavit, but no record of this arrest by the Irving Police Department, or of the hours he spent in the Dallas Police Department Headquarters.

Steve Thomas

There is Steve.

Frazier's Arrest Report from Malcolm Blunt's files.

[Paul Brancato]

2 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

The Dallas Morning News (Sunday, May 5, 1963, p. 5)  under the heading “Military Briefs” lists field training encampments for a number of units including the “488th Military Intelligence Detachment, The Pentagon, July 7-21.”

In it’s edition of Tuesday, December 5, 1967, the same newspaper announced Crichton’s retirement from the Army Reserves and listed him as “commanding officer of the 488th Military Intelligence Detachment….”

Jim - Good sleuthing. I joined a newspaper search website this year, but still had trouble locating things. Is that how you found these clippings? 

So for two detachments it mentions the Pentagon. It continues to amaze and befuddle that with all the clues we still can’t find anything official in military records regarding the 488th.

Steve - why do you assume Texas Army Reserve refers to Texas State Guard? 

[Paul Brancato]

9 hours ago, Chuck Schwartz said:

• Crichton was a key player in the Big Event.  Jack Crichton also had a close association with George H. W. Bush. According to Fabian Escalante (The Secret War: CIA Covert Operations Against Cuba, 1959-62), in 1959, Crichton and Bush raised funds for the CIA's Operation 40. Originally it was set up to organize sabotage operations against Fidel Castro and his Cuban government. However, it evolved into a team of assassins. One member, Frank Sturgis, claimed: "this assassination group (Operation 40) would upon orders, naturally, assassinate either members of the military or the political parties of the foreign country that you were going to infiltrate, and if necessary some of your own members who were suspected of being foreign agents... We were concentrating strictly in Cuba at that particular time."

   

   
  The failure to assassinate or overthrow Fidel Castro caused tremendous problems for the Cuban-Venezuelan Oil Voting Trust Company and other foreign oil companies that had already invested more than $30 million looking for oil in Cuba. In December 1960, CVOVT was de-listed from the American Stock Exchange.

   

  Critchton was appointed head of the intelligence component of the Dallas Civil Defence. The conservative radio commentator Paul Harvey wrote in his syndicated column in September 1960: "The Communists, since 1917, have sold Communism to more people than have been told about Christ after 2,000 years." He urged his readers to support the "counter-attack that had been mounted in Dallas."

   

   
  In 1961 Crichton joined forces with other right-wing figures in Dallas to establish a program called "Know Your Enemy". This was to combat communist influence that "was undermining the American way of life". The following year Crichton opened an underground command post under the patio of the Dallas Health and Science Museum that was intended for "continuity-of-government" operations during a communist attack.

   

  In 1963 Crichton was nominated by the Republican Party for the post of Governor of Texas. He joined forces with George H. W. Bush, who was the nominee for the U.S. Senate. As Crichton later recalled, he and Bush "spoke from the same podiums" that year. However, Crichton was defeated by John Connally and he later wrote a book about his failed attempt to become governor, The Republican-Democrat Political Campaigns: In Texas in 1964.

   

   
  In November 1963 Crichton was involved in the arrangements of the visit that President John F. Kennedy made to Dallas. His close friend, Deputy Police Chief George L. Lumpkin, and a fellow member of the the 488th Military Intelligence Detachment, drove the pilot car of Kennedy's motorcade. Also in the car was Lieutenant Colonel George Whitmeyer, commander of all Army Reserve units in East Texas. The pilot car stopped briefly in front of the Texas School Book Depository, where Lumpkin spoke to a policeman controlling traffic at the corner of Houston and Elm.'

   

   
  In the Warren Commission Report it stated that Crichton arranged for a member of the local Russian community, Ilya Mamantov, to work for the Dallas Police Department as a translator for Russian-born Marina Oswaldshortly after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Crichton's volunteer translated for Oswald during her initial questioning by the Dallas authorities in the hours immediately after her husband Lee Harvey Oswald had been arrested. According to Russ Baker, the author of Family of Secrets (2009), there "were far from literal translations of her Russian words and had the effect of implicating her husband in Kennedy's death."

   

   
  Crichton was president of Nafco Oil and Gas. He also owned a company called Dorchester Gas Producing. A fellow director was David Harold Byrd who along with Clint Murchison, Haroldson L. Hunt and Sid Richardson, was part of the Big Oil group in Dallas. Barr McClellan (Blood, Money & Power) argues that "Big Oil would be during the fifties and into the sixties what the OPEC oil cartel was to the United States in the seventies and beyond". One of the main concerns of this group was the preservation of the oil depletion allowance.

   

   
  Jack Crichton who was President of the Dallas Petroleum Engineers Club, also served as a Director to Florida Gas Company, Clark Oil and Refining, Whitehall Corporation, Transco Energy and the Consolidated Development Corporation.

   

   
  Jack Alston Crichton died in Dallas on 10th December, 2007.
• Also, Crichton went to college with Earle Cabell.

The late and missed Hank Albarelli was working on a book when he passed away suddenly a few months ago. The book is still going to be released. He confided in me, and I suppose I can say this now, that he thought Crichton was the connector in Dallas to the Skorzeny Network. It is likely that Crichton met Skorzeny in the early ‘50’s in Spain. Crichton was there as part of an oil consortium signing deals with Spanish authorities to develop their oil fields, and Skorzeny represented Spanish interests. This last bit comes from Major Ralph Ganis’s book on Skorzeny. 

[Steve Thomas]

2 hours ago, Bart Kamp said:

There is Steve.

Frazier's Arrest Report from Malcolm Blunt's files.

Bart,

 

Thanks for this. I hadn't seen this before.

Steve Thomas

 

[Steve Thomas]

25 minutes ago, Paul Brancato said:

Steve - why do you assume Texas Army Reserve refers to Texas State Guard? 

Paul,

 

You're right. I should have more correctly said, "The Texas State Guard Reserve Corps". Even though the Federal Government re-authorized the establishment of State Guards in 1955, Texas jealously and protectively held on to their Reserve Corps until 1965. It is my belief that they did not want their State guard subject to Federal call-up, as JFK did in 1961 when he nationalized the National Guards in the wake of the Berlin Wall crisis. 

https://wikivisually.com/wiki/Texas_State_Guard

"The federal legislation authorizing them expired on 25 July 1947, this was not taken lightly in some states and most notably in Texas.[citation needed] In that same year, the State Legislature authorized the Texas State Guard Reserve Corps, it was activated in January, 1948. The Reserve Corps continued in existence until ten years after the Congress had once again authorized state guards in 1955. Under statutes enacted by the 59th Legislature, the Texas State Guard Reserve Corps was abolished and Texas State Guard was again authorized and organized on 30 August 1965."

[UNQUOTE]

 

https://legacy.lib.utexas.edu/taro/tslac/30026/tsl-30026.html

Texas Adjutant General's Department:

An Inventory of Texas State Guard/Texas Defense Guard/Texas State Guard Reserve Corps Records at the Texas State Archives, 1938-1983, undated (bulk 1941-1945)

"When the Texas National Guard was demobilized in 1947, the 50th Legislature (by Senate Bill 361) created the Texas State Guard Reserve Corps (TSGRC), to provide a reservoir of military strength for use by the state in time of national or state emergency, when any part of the Texas National Guard was called into federal service. When so activated, this Texas State Guard Reserve Corps would function as the Texas State Guard (TSG). The Governor of Texas appointed a Commanding General for the Texas State Guard Reserve Corps, to be supervised by the Adjutant General of Texas. Initially the state was divided into twelve districts, each with a colonel as regimental commander.
 

In January 1958, the TSGRC was reorganized as follows: an Active Reserve, a Ready Reserve, an Inactive Reserve, an Enlisted Reserve, an Honorary Reserve, a Provost Marshal Section, and an ROTC-NDCC [Reserve Officer Training Corps-National Defense Cadet Corps] Group. As the most important component, the Active Reserve was composed of a Corps Headquarters, one Corps Radio Unit, six Defense Group Headquarters, six Defense Group Radio Units, 30 Internal Security Battalions (about half of them strictly cadre units with officer personnel only), and 12 Radio and Rescue Detachments, with a total authorized strength of 10,000 officers and enlisted men.

In 1965, the 59th Legislature, by House Bill 410, abolished the TSGRC and replaced it with the Texas State Guard; in this act the Active Militia (or State Military Forces) is defined as consisting of the Texas Army National Guard and the Texas Air National Guard (known collectively as the Texas National Guard), supplemented by the Texas State Guard."

[UNQUOTE]

 

Steve Thomas

[Steve Thomas]

3 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

The Dallas Morning News (Sunday, May 5, 1963, p. 5)  under the heading “Military Briefs” lists field training encampments for a number of units including the “488th Military Intelligence Detachment, The Pentagon, July 7-21.”

 

Jim,

There was a real 488th MID. See Thomas Cagley's 1991 Study of Military Intelligence Detachments here"

https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a233391.pdf

see Table II-2 on p. 14 of his Study (p. 21) of the pdf file.

They were one of the MID's who reported directly to the DIA.

See also the obituary of Jack E. Earnest

https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/houstonchronicle/obituary.aspx?pid=160976735#sthash.mX3LJS6E.dpuf

" In June 1956, he was assigned to the 488th Strategic Intelligence Detachment until 1962, achieving the rank of Captain. This latter assignment was primarily concerned with providing intelligence on Russian and other countries' status in exploration and production of oil and natural gas for use with other intelligence units in preparing and updating National Intelligence Summaries."

[UNQUOTE]

That's the kind of work Military Intelligence Detachments did. They were highly focused and highly structured. As Cagley wrote in his Study (p.10)

I just cannot see half the Dallas Police Force zeroing in on Russian gas and oil fields and "preparing National Intelligence Summaries".

 

I personally think that Jack Crichton appropriated the name of a legitimate unit and used it for his own purposes.

 

Steve Thomas

 

[Jim Hargrove]

Steve,

It’s hard for me to believe that the commander of the VIII U.S. Army Corps at Austin would  believe Crichton's story if Crichton just pretended to be in charge of the 488th. The Dallas Morning News was and is a big daily, and I sincerely doubt they printed vanity stories made up out of thin air, at least not ones written solely by the subject. 

[Paul Brancato]

3 hours ago, Steve Thomas said:

Paul,

 

You're right. I should have more correctly said, "The Texas State Guard Reserve Corps". Even though the Federal Government re-authorized the establishment of State Guards in 1955, Texas jealously and protectively held on to their Reserve Corps until 1965. It is my belief that they did not want their State guard subject to Federal call-up, as JFK did in 1961 when he nationalized the National Guards in the wake of the Berlin Wall crisis. 

https://wikivisually.com/wiki/Texas_State_Guard

 

Steve - I’d like to point out the word ‘Army’. As far as I know that term is only used federally. Texas Army is in my opinion just a bad choice of words to mean US Army Reserve units stationed in Texas. 

We have both read studies that pointed out that Reserve Army units became increasingly part of a domestic spying operation. Anti-Communism became the mission, Oil and Gas the cover. International Oil and Gas and US Intelligence are intimately intertwined. Strategic Resources from Warsaw Pact countries? What could that mean? I think this may be a key connection to the Dallas White Russian Community. Possibly connected to this is the assignment of Colonel Frank Brandstetter to the 488th. Eastern European born, I think Hungarian, he found a natural fit at ACSI. Dorothe Matlack at ACSI, who we should recall met with De Mohrenschildt (and Bush crony Devine) after he left Texas and moved to Haiti, was also Hungarian, and was in charge of the Eastern European Emigre ‘desk’ at ACSI.

Crichton was real. His 1964 campaign refers to the 488th in its press releases, if we are to believe the local newspapers. His involvement in the COG underground bunker in Dallas cannot be denied. And what was that for? One thing for sure - secret communications. 

And I’ll add for fun that the late Hank Albarelli confided to me that he had evidence that Crichton met Skorzeny in the early 1950’s  in Spain while the former was representing Texas oil interests and the latter the Spanish government. I can’t prove what I’m going to say, but I suspect Hank thought Crichton kept in touch with Skorzeny. DeMohrenschildt might have been part of the Skorzeny Network, which btw doesn’t mean Nazis in control. Skorzeny was recruited by CIA. His network was clearly protected by CIA. This included US military btw - I read numerous articles by a certain US Air Force Captain stationed in Madrid talking about his dealings with Skorzeny. I’ve read many news accounts of Skorzeny in Spain, in Egypt, in Germany. We knew where he was always. And he even says he worked for us - and others. There are even news reports of Skorzeny preparing to mount an operation to kidnap or kill Castro in about 1962. There is at least one CIA interview with a Cuban exile that mentions Skorzeny. 

All of that as an aside ... forgive me.

 

Edited September 5, 2019 by Paul Brancato

[Steve Thomas]

2 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

Steve,

It’s hard for me to believe that the commander of the VIII U.S. Army Corps at Austin would  believe Crichton's story if Crichton just pretended to be in charge of the 488th. The Dallas Morning News was and is a big daily, and I sincerely doubt they printed vanity stories made up out of thin air, at least not ones written solely by the subject. 

 

Jim,

 

It's curious. Look at this article from The Abilene Reporter for November 17, 1965.

https://newspaperarchive.com/abilene-reporter-news-nov-17-1965-p-61/

In the article, it says that Offer was Regular Army, not Reservist, yet two times in the article it refers to him as a Reserve Army officer.

It has me scratching my head.

I've wondered before how a U.S. Army Corps could be headed by a Colonel.

It seems there was a major drawdown of the U.S. Army Reserves in 1965. I've seen references to that several times in other places.

I guess Crichton's 488th was not part of the 751 units affected huh?

If Offer was Regular Army, I wonder how he felt about Crichton "...  starting up his own spy unit, the 488th Military Intelligence Detachment." as the Spartacus page puts it.

https://spartacus-educational.com/MDcrichton.htm

Do they do that in the Army very often?

(Asked not entirely tongue in cheek)

 

PS: While Legion of Merit awards were originally pretty prestigious; by 1967, they were being given out by Colonels.

 

Steve Thomas

 

[Jim Hargrove]

7 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

Jim - Good sleuthing. I joined a newspaper search website this year, but still had trouble locating things. Is that how you found these clippings? 

Paul,

Yes, I used a genealogical service that included, I think, the same database that newspapers.com uses.  I chose it because it had a thrifty sale for a 2-year subscription.  If you spend just an hour or two reading up on search techniques for whatever front end you use, it can make a big difference in the quality of the results.

[Paul Brancato]

Steve - I know from personal experience that print media gets things mixed up. It’s not where you look for accuracy in specifics and language. 

I’m not answering for Jim when I say that the Army can do what it wants and does. I don’t imagine it to move in lockstep. I don’t know where Haapanen got the idea that the 488th reported directly to the Pentagon, ACSI. But why is that a surprise? Crichton was a well connected intelligence asset, as was Brandstetter, who did personally by his own admission report directly to ACSI for 19 years, and continued to be a part time asset after that. So maybe ACSI ran other autonomous units outside of the normal chain of command. I know you’d like proof, one way or the other. But which is more logical? Crichton lying to the press and anyone else who would listen including the Military Order of World Wars about his Detachment, or that his Detachment was run in great secrecy and was manned with Dallas retired army reservist police detectives? The lack of transparency in military records becomes a Red Flag rather than a reason to dismiss Crichton’s story.