Lumpkin, Gannaway, and the DPD-Army Intelligence network

[Paul Jolliffe]

On 2/17/2019 at 5:31 PM, Steve Thomas said:

Bill,

 

Memorandum by SS Agent Roger Warner and Elmer Moore dated 12/1/63

These became the SS copy of the Dispatch Tapes found in CD 87 beginning on page 636 and running to page 644.

http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/J%20Disk/Justice%20Department%20of/Justice%20Department%20of%20JFK-King%20Reinvestigation/Item%2005.pdf

Page 5.

“On November 29, 1960, SA Warner conferred with Chief Lumpkin, Police Department, relative to reports of Police dispatches covering the arrival of President Kennedy in Dallas, Texas, the subsequent assassination and removal of President Kennedy to Parkland Memorial Hospital. These broadcasts were transmitted on Channel 2 which was an auxiliary channel used by the Police for special occasions. Also Chief Lumpkin provided for transcription on our tape the Police recordings of Channel# 1, the standard Police band which on the date of the Presidential assassination contained the Police broadcasts relative to the capture of Lee Harvey Oswald and the shooting of Police Officer Tippit.”

 

Someone who is better at this than I am would know if key dispatches were left out of this set of transcripts. Didn't the WC judge them to be "inadequate", and demanded better copies?

 

Steve Thomas

Steve,

Are you referring to the fact that CD 290 (dated December 5, 1963) was such an inadequate transcription by the DPD themselves that they even managed to "omit" the infamous 12:45 order from Murray Jackson to J.D. Tippit ordering Tippit to move into central Oak Cliff? (Note the first two pages of the transcripts below.)

(Personally, I doubt that "order" existed in the first place - I suspect it was added later as a way to explain Tippit's presence in an area where he should not have been, under normal circumstances.)

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10691#relPageId=2&tab=page

Edited May 30, 2019 by Paul Jolliffe

[Paul Jolliffe]

Steve,

After re-reading the link you provided above (the gist of which most researchers have long been aware), the argument that the "original" Dictabelt recording on Channel 1, analyzed by the experts for the HSCA, is NOT the original becomes even more compelling.

(For those who have not read Steve's link above, please do so.)

Meanwhile, we know that all of the audio evidence as of 5 pm on 11/22/63 was in the possession of Deputy Chief George Lumpkin up until the moment when all of it was turned over to the FBI. If, as I strongly suspect, the FBI did switch the real original Dictabelt recording for one which was later analyzed for the HSCA, then it could only have been done with the connivance of someone on the inside at the DPD. Someone who had access to the Dictabelts and who could get an extra one into the hands of the FBI.

That person had to be a higher-up.

That George Lumpkin not only was in position to deliver an unused Dictabelt to the FBI for the re-recording and substitution of the orignal, but was also the person to direct Roy Truly to Captain Fritz to announce "Oswald's" suspicious absence from the "roll-call", can not be a coincidence.

As I earlier noted on a different thread,  Lumpkin and TSBD President Jack C. Cason almost certainly knew each other from their mutual leadership roles in the Dallas Post 53 of the American Legion. Part of the long-standing mission of the American Legion was to sniff out subversives in sensitive positions in America. That the "Red-loving" "Oswald" was right under the nose of both men, working in the TSBD along the president's motorcade route, defies any explanation save conspiracy.

[Guest]

316th Intelligence Core Detachment.

Thanks to Malcolm Blunt for sending this to me today.

[Paul Brancato]

By your reckoning Bart, or Steve, how large was the 316th MID?

[Guest]

ASA activities 59-64.

Thanks to Malcolm Blunt. 

[Steve Thomas]

On 6/1/2019 at 6:43 AM, Paul Brancato said:

By your reckoning Bart, or Steve, how large was the 316th MID?

Paul,

<QUOTE>

MEMORANDUM

(Updated version as of February 21, 1997)

To:

Jeremy Gunn

cc: David Marwell; Chris Barger; Doug Horne; Brian Rosen; Joan Zimmerman

From: Tim Wray

Subject: Army Intelligence in Dallas

Here's some of what we've learned so far about Army intelligence in Dallas

 

http://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/jfk/NARA-Oct2017/ARRB/JMASIH/WP-DOCS/TIM/112DALLA.WPD.PDF

 

3. 316th INTC Detachment.

The 112th INTC Group’s personnel total given above does not include members of the smaller 316th INTC Detachment, which had an authorized strength of 38 in 1963. The 316th INTC Detachment was transferred from Fort Jackson, South Carolina to Fort Sam Houston and attached to the 112th INTC Group in December, 1962.

<END QUOTE>

 

Steve Thomas

 

[Steve Thomas]

On 5/30/2019 at 8:20 AM, Paul Jolliffe said:

That George Lumpkin not only was in position to deliver an unused Dictabelt to the FBI for the re-recording and substitution of the orignal, but was also the person to direct Roy Truly to Captain Fritz to announce "Oswald's" suspicious absence from the "roll-call", can not be a coincidence.

Paul,

 

One of the things that struck me about Roy Truly's WC testimony (http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/truly1.htm), was the dispassionate, almost disinterested way he referred to Marrion Baker as "the officer", vs. his reference to George Lumpkin by name. Little alarm bells started going off in my head.

 

Mr. TRULY. I heard a policeman in this area along here make a remark, "Oh, goddam," or something like that. I just remember that. It wasn't a motorcycle policeman. It was one of the Dallas policeman, I think-- words to that effect.
I wouldn't know him. I just remember there was a policeman standing along in this area about 7, 8, or 10 feet from me.
But as I came back here, and everybody. was screaming and hollering, just moments later-I saw a young motorcycle policeman run up to the building,

 

"I was trying to show the officer the pathway up,"

Mr. TRULY. "When I reached there, the officer had his gun pointing at Oswald."

 

"He came over. And some time about then I said, "Officer, I think"--let's back up."
"I believe the officer told me as we walked down into the seventh floor, "Be careful, this man will blow your head off.""
"And I told the officer that I didn't feel like the shots came from the building."

 

"Mr. BELIN. Then what did you do after you got that information?
Mr. TRULY. Chief Lumpkin of the Dallas Police Department was standing a few feet from me. I told Chief Lumpkin that I had a boy missing over here "I don't know whether it amounts to anything or not." And I gave him his description. And he says, "Just a moment. We will go tell Captain Fritz."
Mr. BELIN. All right. And then what happened?
Mr. TRULY. So Chief Lumpkin had several officers there that he was talking to, and I assumed that he gave him some instructions of some nature I didn't hear it. And then he turned to me and says, "Now we will go upstairs"."

 

Steve Thomas

[Paul Brancato]

22 hours ago, Steve Thomas said:

Paul,

<QUOTE>

MEMORANDUM

(Updated version as of February 21, 1997)

To:

Jeremy Gunn

cc: David Marwell; Chris Barger; Doug Horne; Brian Rosen; Joan Zimmerman

From: Tim Wray

Subject: Army Intelligence in Dallas

Here's some of what we've learned so far about Army intelligence in Dallas

 

http://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/jfk/NARA-Oct2017/ARRB/JMASIH/WP-DOCS/TIM/112DALLA.WPD.PDF

 

3. 316th INTC Detachment.

The 112th INTC Group’s personnel total given above does not include members of the smaller 316th INTC Detachment, which had an authorized strength of 38 in 1963. The 316th INTC Detachment was transferred from Fort Jackson, South Carolina to Fort Sam Houston and attached to the 112th INTC Group in December, 1962.

<END QUOTE>

 

Steve Thomas

 

The 112tn and 316th were active duty. 

I asked about the size of the Detachment because you have previously stated that on the basis of an interview you conducted you concluded that a Detachment would normally be 8-10 men, making Jack Crichton’s description of his 488th MID less believable. The 316th had 38 men. But the other factor is we are comparing active duty to reserved. 

[Steve Thomas]

Paul,

 

You wrote:

 

"The 112tn and 316th were active duty. 

I asked about the size of the Detachment because you have previously stated that on the basis of an interview you conducted you concluded that a Detachment would normally be 8-10 men, making Jack Crichton’s description of his 488th MID less believable. The 316th had 38 men. But the other factor is we are comparing active duty to reserved."

 

I don't know what to tell you. All I know is that in his 1991 study of MID's, https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a233391.pdf ,

Thomas Cagley wrote that 90% of MID's were comprised of 9 men. (see p. 11).

Military units were constituted and re-constituted so often, it's hard to keep track of them in their various permutations.. For example, see the lineage of the 112th:

HEADQUARTERS 112TH MILITARY INTELLIGENCE BRIGADE

https://history.army.mil/html/books/060/60-13-1/cmhPub_60-13-1.pdf

pp. 222-223

 

LINEAGE:

(inactive)

Constituted 10 May 1946 in the Army of the United States as the 112th Counter Intelligence

Corps Detachment. Activated 21 May 1946 at Dallas, Texas. Allotted 26 February 1951 to the Regular Army. Re-designated 1 August 1957 as the ll2th Counter Intelligence Corps Group. Re-designated 25 July 1961 as the 112th Intelligence Corps Group. Re-designated 15 October 1966 as the ll2th Military Intelligence Group. Inactivated 30 June 1974 at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. Re-designated 1 July 1987 as Headquarters, 112th Military Intelligence Brigade; concurrently transferred to the United States Army Training and Doctrine Command and activated at Fort Devens, Massachusetts. Inactivated 30 January 1993 at Fort Devens, Massachusetts.

 

When you look at a military unit, you have to be aware whether it's an MID or an INTC or a Brigade, or what not, at the time you are looking at it.

 

Steve Thomas

[Bill Simpich]

I have been wondering whether Crichton's 488th Army Intelligence Reserve Unit really existed, after reviewing the above.

This line of evidence from "Looking Glass and Silver Dollar" by Peter Dale Scott concludes that it did:

The Ubiquitous Shadow of the 488th Intelligence Reserve Unit

The explosive phase-one theory swiftly died, but did not lose its historical relevance. It led to the perceived risk that right-wing elements, such as Senator Eastland’s Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, would provoke a war with Cuba and possibly Russia. This fear became Johnson’s excuse for federalizing the murder case and persuading Earl Warren and Richard Russell to join the Warren Commission.44. Thus was established the official phase-two explanation, that Oswald was a misfit who acted alone.

Of interest still today is the coincidence that the same the 488th Army Intelligence Reserve unit helped generate the false Marina story, as well as the false Stringfellow report. The interpreter who first supplied the Marina story, Ilya Mamantov, was selected as the result of a phone call between Deputy Police Chief George Lumpkin and Jack Crichton.45. We have already seen that Crichton commanded the 488th; and Lumpkin, in addition to being the Deputy Police Chief, was also a deputy commander of the 488th under Crichton. 46. 

John Crichton was the kind of figure Malcolm Gladwell in The Tipping Point described as a “connector....people with a special gift for bringing the world together.” 47. Some of his contacts are figures who should be familiar to students of the JFK assassination. His superior in the Army Reserves, Lieutenant Colonel George Whitmeyer, was on 11/22 in the pilot car of the Kennedy motorcade along with DPD Deputy Chief George Lumpkin; the pilot car is of interest because of its unexplained stop in front of the Texas School Book Depository.48. D.H. “Dry Hole” Byrd, owner of the Texas School Book Depository, was a director of Crichton’s firm Dorchester Gas Producing.49.

Crichton, an oil engineer and corporation executive, also doubled as a member of the Dallas overworld. Although his 488th intelligence unit consisted almost 50 percent of Dallas policemen, Crichton also used it as a venue in the late 1950s to conduct “a study of Soviet oil fields;” and in the 1990s Crichton would himself explore the oil and gas reserves in the former Soviet Union.50. Also interested in Soviet oil reserves at this time were Ilya Mamantov’s employers and personal friends, the wealthy Pew family in Dallas who were owners of Sunoco. By 2009 the second largest source of crude for Sunoco (after Western Africa) was Central Asia, supplying 86,000 barrels of crude a day. 51.

But Crichton’s most significant function as a connector on 11/22 may have been in his capacity as chief of intelligence for Dallas Civil Defense, which worked out of an underground Emergency Operating Center under the patio of the Dallas Health and Science Museum. As Russ Baker reports, “Because it was intended for ‘continuity of government’ operations during an attack, it was fully equipped with communications equipment.” 52. A speech given at the dedication of the Center in 1961 supplies further details:

This Emergency Operating Center is part of the National Plan to link Federal, State and local government agencies in a communications network from which rescue operations can be directed in time of local or National emergency. It is a vital part of the National, State, and local Operational Survival Plan. 53.

In an earlier draft of this talk I attempted to describe the central importance of America’s emergency communications network (or so-called Doomsday communications network) in four of our country’s recent provocation-deception plots: 11/22, Watergate, Iran-Contra, and 9/11. If one part of the government is deceiving another, it needs its own alternative network to do so. Oliver North, for example, used just such an anti-terrorist network, codenamed Flashboard, to conduct the Iran-Contra arms operations for which he was ultimately fired. 54.

There is not time today to develop this theme, other than to note the importance of Crichton’s access to it. But others beside myself have pointed to the meta-importance of those charged with overseeing the Doomsday communications network, known most recently as the Continuity of Government (COG) network. James Mann, for example, has referred to the COG network overseers as “part of the permanent, though hidden, national security apparatus of the United States, inhabitants of a world in which Presidents may come and go, but America always keeps on fighting.” 55.

The DPD-Army Connection Reconsidered

I devoted a whole chapter of my book Deep Politics to the Dallas Police-Army Intelligence connection. But I now think that I seriously misinterpreted its significance, by seeing its phase-one propensity as an example of right-wing Texas divergence from the phase-two inclination of those responsible for running the country. Today we know that the phase-one zeal in Dallas to implicate Castro, by the use of deceptive falsehoods, had also characterized the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington.

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." 56. 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.

It is now clear that Stringfellow’s claims about Oswald as a Communist Party visitor to Cuba, though clearly false, fell well within the guidelines for a provocation-deception as set out in the Northwoods and May 1963 documents. All this Cuban deception planning was in support of JCS OPLANS 312 (Air Attack in Cuba) and 316 (Invasion of Cuba). These were not theoretical exercises, but actively developed operational plans which the JCS were only too eager to execute. As they told Kennedy, “We are not only ready to take any action you may order in Cuba, we are also in an excellent condition world-wide to counter any Soviet military response to such action.” 57.

In other words, they were prepared for a nuclear strike against Soviet Russia; even though the JCS, as Air Force General Leon Johnson told the National Security Council in September 1963, believed this would probably result in “at least 140 million fatalities in the USSR.” 58.

At the peak of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, according to Khruschchev’s memoir, Robert Kennedy told the Russian ambassador, Anatoly Dobrynin:

The President is in a grave situation and does not know how to get out of it. We are under very severe stress. In fact we are under pressure from our military to use force against Cuba…. Even though the President himself is very much against starting a war over Cuba, an irreversible chain of events could occur against his will. That is why the President is appealing directly to Chairman Khrushchev for his help in liquidating this conflict. If the situation continues much longer, the President is not sure that the military will not overthrow him and seize power. The American army could get out of control." 59.

Footnotes:

44. Beschloss, Taking Charge, 67-69, LBJ phone call with Richard Russell, 11/29/63; cf. 65.
45. 9 WH 106; Scott, Deep Politics, 275-76; Russ Baker, Family of Secrets, 119-22.
46. Rodney P. Carlisle and Dominic J. Monetta, Brandy: Our Man in Acapulco (Denton, TX: University of North Texas Press, 1999), 128.
47. Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point, 38.
48. Discussion in Scott, Deep Politics, 273-74.
49. In early November 1963, Byrd and his investment partner, James Ling, made a significant insider purchase of stock in their defense industry investment, LTV. Although required by SEC rules to report this insider purchase, they delayed doing so until well after Kennedy’s assassination. Then in January LTV received the first major LBJ defense contract from the Pentagon – for a fighter plane designed for Vietnam. Cf. Joan Mellen, “The Kennedy Assassination and the Current Political Moment,” Part II, http://www.joanmellen.net/truth-2.html.
50. Crichton’s collaborator in the 1950s study, fellow 488th member Lt. Col. Frank Brandstetter, was in turn a friend of men like:
1) David Phillips, in charge of Covert Action at the Mexico City Station when Oswald allegedly visited there; Phillips had known Brandstetter since both men were together in Havana in the 1950s (Carlisle and Monetta, Brandy, 146-47)
2) Gordon McLendon, wealthy Dallas businessman whom Jack Ruby described as one of his six closest friends (20 WH 39);
3) George de Mohrenschildt, the oilman whom some see as a handler for the Oswalds in 1962; and also Dorothe Matlack and Sam Kail, the Army Intelligence personnel who coordinated George de Mohrenschildt’s April 1963 visit with CIA and Army Intelligence in Washington
4) Philippe Thyraud de Vosjoli, a French intelligence (SDECE) agent who worked closely with Angleton in Washington. On 11/22 de Vosjoli reportedly panicked on hearing of Kennedy’s death, packed a few clothes into a van, and departed Washington to join Brandstetter in Acapulco. (Tom Mangold, Cold Warrior, 131-33).
51. Sunoco, Inc., Annual Report, 2009, 4.
52. Russ Baker, Family of Secrets, 121.
53. “Statement by Col. John W. Mayo, Chairman of City-County Civil Defense and Disaster Commission at the Dedication of the Emergency Operating Center at Fair Park,” May 24, 1961, http://www.civildefensemuseum.com/fallout/dallaseoc.html.
Six linear inches of Civil Defense Administrative Files are preserved in the Dallas Municipal Archives; a Finding Guide is viewable on line at http://www.ci.dallas.tx.us/cso/archives/FindingGuides/08001.html. I hope an interested researcher may wish to consult them.
54. Peter Dale Scott, "Northwards Without North: Bush, Counterterrorism, and the Continuation of Secret Power." Social Justice (San Francisco), XVI, 2 (Summer 1989), 1-30: cf. Peter Dale Scott, "The Terrorism Task Force." Covert Action Information Bulletin, 33 (Winter 1990), 12-15.
55. James Mann, The Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet (New York: Viking, 2004), 145. In 1991 a CNN feature on the COG overseers described these overseers even more ominously as a “shadow government,” and opened with “In the
United States Federal Government there is a super-secret agency which controls this Shadow Government” (CNN, November 17, 1991, quoted in Shirley Anne Warshaw, The Co-presidency of Bush and Cheney [Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Politics and Policy, 2009], 162).
56. The Military Order of World Wars (Turner Publishing Company, 1997), 120.
57. Memorandum From the Joint Chiefs of Staff to President Kennedy, November 16, 1962JCSM-910-62, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/msc_cuba186.asp: “The Joint Chiefs of Staff are glad to report that our Armed Forces are in an optimum posture to execute CINCLANT OPLANS 312-62 (Air Attack in Cuba)(1) and 316-62 (Invasion of Cuba).(2) We are not only ready to take any action you may order in Cuba, we are also in an excellent condition world-wide to counter any Soviet military response to such action.”
58. Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, 239-40.
59. Khrushchev Remembers, ed. Strobe Talbott (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970; citation from paperback edition, New York: Bantam, 1971), pp. 551-52; quoted in James K. Galbraith, “Did the U.S. Military Plan a Nuclear First Strike for 1963?” American Prospect, 9/21/24; Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, 27.

[Steve Thomas]

7 hours ago, Bill Simpich said:

I have been wondering whether Crichton's 488th Army Intelligence Reserve Unit really existed, after reviewing the above.

 

Bill,

Your post raises some interesting issues. I'd like to address two of them:

1)

Russ Baker's book, Family of Secrets, has some information on Whitmeyer. In 1956 Jack Crichton, a close friend of George W. W. Bush, started up his own spy unit, the 488th Military Intelligence Detachment. Crichton served as the unit's commander under Lieutenant Colonel George Whitmeyer, who was in overall command of all Army Reserve units in East Texas.
 

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=156778130

DPD Deputy Chief, George L. Lumpkin, drove the Pilot Car. Lumpkin was also a Captain in the 488th Military Intelligence Detachment. Lumpkin was also a Captain in the 488th Military Intelligence Detachment - the spy unit in Dallas created and led by ex-OSS, Col. Jack Crichton and was the highest ranking officer in the 488th and Col. Whitmeyer's superior.

Who was the commander, and who was the subordinate?

 

Peter Dale Scott COPA Conference 11/24/2010

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

“We have already seen that Crichton commanded the 488th; and Lumpkin, in addition to being the Deputy Police Chief, was also a deputy commander of the 488th under Crichton.”

 

John Crichton was the kind of figure Malcolm Gladwell in The Tipping Point described as a “connector….people with a special gift for bringing the world together.”# Some of his contacts are figures who should be familiar to students of the JFK assassination. His superior in the Army Reserves, Lieutenant Colonel George Whitmeyer, was on 11/22 in the pilot car of the Kennedy motorcade along with DPD Deputy Chief George Lumpkin;

 

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.

 

Brandy, Our Man in Acapulco: The Life and Times of Colonel Frank M. Brandstetter. A Biography by Rodney P. Carlisle and Dominic J. Monetta. University of North Texas Press, 1999.

https://books.google.com/books?id=QLdqgDsVio4C&pg=PA122&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=3#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

pp. 127+ “after leaving Jamaica in early 1957, Brandy served as assistant troop commander and provost marshal of the Fourth U.S. Army Area Intelligence School for two weeks in August, 1957.

p. 128. “As was common for Brandy, he received a fine commendation for his work from his commanding officer, at this time, Colonel George Lumpkin....”

p. 129. (Sometime after 1958) “In particular, he met Lt. Colonel William B. Rose, chief of the Army Intelligence Reserve Branch of the Office of the Assistance Chief of Staff, Intelligence (ACSI) at the Pentagon.”

Paul Brancato posted in the Education Forum March 15, 2019:

 

“There are two books about Colonel Brandstetter, one a co-written autobiography. He states in both books that he worked for ACSI for two decades, and that in 1959 he was assigned, or permitted to join, the 488th MID for weekend duties by Colonel Rose at ACSI.”

Crichton said he established his 488^th in 1956?

If Crischton established the 488^th and was its only commander, how could Whitmeyer be his boss after 1956, and Lumpkin be Brandstetter’s (who was assigned to (or encouraged to join) the 488^th) boss in 1959?

 

2)

Which Reserve component were these people in?

U.S. Coast Guard Reserve Policy Manual (2016)

https://media.defense.gov/2017/Mar/28/2001723243/-1/-1/0/CIM_1001_28C.PDF

 

Reserve Component Categories:

• Ready Reserves

• Standby Reserves

• Retired Reserves

The three components had to do with "time in" and how much you could earn towards retirement based on length of service and pay earned during that time.

Department of Defense Uniform Reserve, Training, and Retirement Categories for the Reserve Components

INSTRUCTION

NUMBER 1215.06 March 11, 2014 Incorporating Change 1, Effective May 19, 2015

https://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/DD/issuances/dodi/121506p.pdf?ver=2019-03-11-081732-937

 

“DoDI 1215.06, March 11, 2014 Change 1, 05/19/2015 2e. All RC Service members not counted in Active Component (AC) end strengths pursuant to Title 10, United States Code (U.S.C.) (Reference (d)), will be placed in one of the Reserve Component categories (RCCs) and training and retirement categories (TRCs) described in this instruction. Individuals will be assigned to RCCs and TRCs based on their obligations to meet mission and training requirements as described in Enclosure 5.”

 

Enclosure 5. p. 23

“1.GENERAL

a. This enclosure establishes authorized RCCs and TRCs in the RCs for training and accountability purposes. RCCs are categories identifying an individual’s status in a RC. There are three RCCs: The Ready Reserve, the Standby Reserve, and the Retired Reserve. Each member of the National Guard and Reserve is assigned within one of those categories. All National Guard members, including those in the inactive National Guard (ING), are in the Ready Reserve.

 

You can find Title 10 of the United States Code Subtitle E— Reserve Components here:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/subtitle-E

 

The command structure and reporting network for each of these components would have been different, and until we see some kind of paper trail for Crichton's 488th, we can't really know who was the superior and who was the subordinate and who was reporting to who and what they were actually reporting.

In his oral history, Crichton said that there were 100 men in his 488th, but I have never seen anyone (aside from Brandstetter) who ever claimed to be in it.

 

Steve Thomas

 

 

[Paul Brancato]

11 hours ago, Bill Simpich said:

I have been wondering whether Crichton's 488th Army Intelligence Reserve Unit really existed, after reviewing the above.

This line of evidence from "Looking Glass and Silver Dollar" by Peter Dale Scott concludes that it did:

The Ubiquitous Shadow of the 488th Intelligence Reserve Unit

The explosive phase-one theory swiftly died, but did not lose its historical relevance. It led to the perceived risk that right-wing elements, such as Senator Eastland’s Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, would provoke a war with Cuba and possibly Russia. This fear became Johnson’s excuse for federalizing the murder case and persuading Earl Warren and Richard Russell to join the Warren Commission.44. Thus was established the official phase-two explanation, that Oswald was a misfit who acted alone.

Of interest still today is the coincidence that the same the 488th Army Intelligence Reserve unit helped generate the false Marina story, as well as the false Stringfellow report. The interpreter who first supplied the Marina story, Ilya Mamantov, was selected as the result of a phone call between Deputy Police Chief George Lumpkin and Jack Crichton.45. We have already seen that Crichton commanded the 488th; and Lumpkin, in addition to being the Deputy Police Chief, was also a deputy commander of the 488th under Crichton. 46. 

John Crichton was the kind of figure Malcolm Gladwell in The Tipping Point described as a “connector....people with a special gift for bringing the world together.” 47. Some of his contacts are figures who should be familiar to students of the JFK assassination. His superior in the Army Reserves, Lieutenant Colonel George Whitmeyer, was on 11/22 in the pilot car of the Kennedy motorcade along with DPD Deputy Chief George Lumpkin; the pilot car is of interest because of its unexplained stop in front of the Texas School Book Depository.48. D.H. “Dry Hole” Byrd, owner of the Texas School Book Depository, was a director of Crichton’s firm Dorchester Gas Producing.49.

Crichton, an oil engineer and corporation executive, also doubled as a member of the Dallas overworld. Although his 488th intelligence unit consisted almost 50 percent of Dallas policemen, Crichton also used it as a venue in the late 1950s to conduct “a study of Soviet oil fields;” and in the 1990s Crichton would himself explore the oil and gas reserves in the former Soviet Union.50. Also interested in Soviet oil reserves at this time were Ilya Mamantov’s employers and personal friends, the wealthy Pew family in Dallas who were owners of Sunoco. By 2009 the second largest source of crude for Sunoco (after Western Africa) was Central Asia, supplying 86,000 barrels of crude a day. 51.

But Crichton’s most significant function as a connector on 11/22 may have been in his capacity as chief of intelligence for Dallas Civil Defense, which worked out of an underground Emergency Operating Center under the patio of the Dallas Health and Science Museum. As Russ Baker reports, “Because it was intended for ‘continuity of government’ operations during an attack, it was fully equipped with communications equipment.” 52. A speech given at the dedication of the Center in 1961 supplies further details:

This Emergency Operating Center is part of the National Plan to link Federal, State and local government agencies in a communications network from which rescue operations can be directed in time of local or National emergency. It is a vital part of the National, State, and local Operational Survival Plan. 53.

In an earlier draft of this talk I attempted to describe the central importance of America’s emergency communications network (or so-called Doomsday communications network) in four of our country’s recent provocation-deception plots: 11/22, Watergate, Iran-Contra, and 9/11. If one part of the government is deceiving another, it needs its own alternative network to do so. Oliver North, for example, used just such an anti-terrorist network, codenamed Flashboard, to conduct the Iran-Contra arms operations for which he was ultimately fired. 54.

There is not time today to develop this theme, other than to note the importance of Crichton’s access to it. But others beside myself have pointed to the meta-importance of those charged with overseeing the Doomsday communications network, known most recently as the Continuity of Government (COG) network. James Mann, for example, has referred to the COG network overseers as “part of the permanent, though hidden, national security apparatus of the United States, inhabitants of a world in which Presidents may come and go, but America always keeps on fighting.” 55.

The DPD-Army Connection Reconsidered

I devoted a whole chapter of my book Deep Politics to the Dallas Police-Army Intelligence connection. But I now think that I seriously misinterpreted its significance, by seeing its phase-one propensity as an example of right-wing Texas divergence from the phase-two inclination of those responsible for running the country. Today we know that the phase-one zeal in Dallas to implicate Castro, by the use of deceptive falsehoods, had also characterized the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington.

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." 56. 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.

It is now clear that Stringfellow’s claims about Oswald as a Communist Party visitor to Cuba, though clearly false, fell well within the guidelines for a provocation-deception as set out in the Northwoods and May 1963 documents. All this Cuban deception planning was in support of JCS OPLANS 312 (Air Attack in Cuba) and 316 (Invasion of Cuba). These were not theoretical exercises, but actively developed operational plans which the JCS were only too eager to execute. As they told Kennedy, “We are not only ready to take any action you may order in Cuba, we are also in an excellent condition world-wide to counter any Soviet military response to such action.” 57.

In other words, they were prepared for a nuclear strike against Soviet Russia; even though the JCS, as Air Force General Leon Johnson told the National Security Council in September 1963, believed this would probably result in “at least 140 million fatalities in the USSR.” 58.

At the peak of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, according to Khruschchev’s memoir, Robert Kennedy told the Russian ambassador, Anatoly Dobrynin:

The President is in a grave situation and does not know how to get out of it. We are under very severe stress. In fact we are under pressure from our military to use force against Cuba…. Even though the President himself is very much against starting a war over Cuba, an irreversible chain of events could occur against his will. That is why the President is appealing directly to Chairman Khrushchev for his help in liquidating this conflict. If the situation continues much longer, the President is not sure that the military will not overthrow him and seize power. The American army could get out of control." 59.

Footnotes:

44. Beschloss, Taking Charge, 67-69, LBJ phone call with Richard Russell, 11/29/63; cf. 65.
45. 9 WH 106; Scott, Deep Politics, 275-76; Russ Baker, Family of Secrets, 119-22.
46. Rodney P. Carlisle and Dominic J. Monetta, Brandy: Our Man in Acapulco (Denton, TX: University of North Texas Press, 1999), 128.
47. Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point, 38.
48. Discussion in Scott, Deep Politics, 273-74.
49. In early November 1963, Byrd and his investment partner, James Ling, made a significant insider purchase of stock in their defense industry investment, LTV. Although required by SEC rules to report this insider purchase, they delayed doing so until well after Kennedy’s assassination. Then in January LTV received the first major LBJ defense contract from the Pentagon – for a fighter plane designed for Vietnam. Cf. Joan Mellen, “The Kennedy Assassination and the Current Political Moment,” Part II, http://www.joanmellen.net/truth-2.html.
50. Crichton’s collaborator in the 1950s study, fellow 488th member Lt. Col. Frank Brandstetter, was in turn a friend of men like:
1) David Phillips, in charge of Covert Action at the Mexico City Station when Oswald allegedly visited there; Phillips had known Brandstetter since both men were together in Havana in the 1950s (Carlisle and Monetta, Brandy, 146-47)
2) Gordon McLendon, wealthy Dallas businessman whom Jack Ruby described as one of his six closest friends (20 WH 39);
3) George de Mohrenschildt, the oilman whom some see as a handler for the Oswalds in 1962; and also Dorothe Matlack and Sam Kail, the Army Intelligence personnel who coordinated George de Mohrenschildt’s April 1963 visit with CIA and Army Intelligence in Washington
4) Philippe Thyraud de Vosjoli, a French intelligence (SDECE) agent who worked closely with Angleton in Washington. On 11/22 de Vosjoli reportedly panicked on hearing of Kennedy’s death, packed a few clothes into a van, and departed Washington to join Brandstetter in Acapulco. (Tom Mangold, Cold Warrior, 131-33).
51. Sunoco, Inc., Annual Report, 2009, 4.
52. Russ Baker, Family of Secrets, 121.
53. “Statement by Col. John W. Mayo, Chairman of City-County Civil Defense and Disaster Commission at the Dedication of the Emergency Operating Center at Fair Park,” May 24, 1961, http://www.civildefensemuseum.com/fallout/dallaseoc.html.
Six linear inches of Civil Defense Administrative Files are preserved in the Dallas Municipal Archives; a Finding Guide is viewable on line at http://www.ci.dallas.tx.us/cso/archives/FindingGuides/08001.html. I hope an interested researcher may wish to consult them.
54. Peter Dale Scott, "Northwards Without North: Bush, Counterterrorism, and the Continuation of Secret Power." Social Justice (San Francisco), XVI, 2 (Summer 1989), 1-30: cf. Peter Dale Scott, "The Terrorism Task Force." Covert Action Information Bulletin, 33 (Winter 1990), 12-15.
55. James Mann, The Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet (New York: Viking, 2004), 145. In 1991 a CNN feature on the COG overseers described these overseers even more ominously as a “shadow government,” and opened with “In the
United States Federal Government there is a super-secret agency which controls this Shadow Government” (CNN, November 17, 1991, quoted in Shirley Anne Warshaw, The Co-presidency of Bush and Cheney [Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Politics and Policy, 2009], 162).
56. The Military Order of World Wars (Turner Publishing Company, 1997), 120.
57. Memorandum From the Joint Chiefs of Staff to President Kennedy, November 16, 1962JCSM-910-62, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/msc_cuba186.asp: “The Joint Chiefs of Staff are glad to report that our Armed Forces are in an optimum posture to execute CINCLANT OPLANS 312-62 (Air Attack in Cuba)(1) and 316-62 (Invasion of Cuba).(2) We are not only ready to take any action you may order in Cuba, we are also in an excellent condition world-wide to counter any Soviet military response to such action.”
58. Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, 239-40.
59. Khrushchev Remembers, ed. Strobe Talbott (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970; citation from paperback edition, New York: Bantam, 1971), pp. 551-52; quoted in James K. Galbraith, “Did the U.S. Military Plan a Nuclear First Strike for 1963?” American Prospect, 9/21/24; Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, 27.

Appreciate the post, and your efforts to dig down to the truth about the 488th. I knew Steve would respond as he did. He and I have been back and forth on this, and on the military reserve presence in Dealey Plaza, all the Colonels etc. I wish I had something new. What I can offer is some clarification and a few key questions. First, because of Steve I bought the Military Order of World Wars book. My edition is 1995. Hard to imagine that they would reprint in 1997. My edition has an entry for Crichton,and mentions that he ran his own military intelligence detachment, but does not date it, or give it a number like 488. It appears that the details in the book are provided by the individuals in it, who are members by choice. Crichton, and Lumpkin, were both members, but they are not cross referenced at all. 

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. 

In my opinion Brandstetter’s statement regarding ACSI and the 488th is of immense importance. Brandy, Portrait of an Intelligence Officer is a must read co-written autobiography. Steve says that is the only reference, other than from Crichton himself, of the 488th. It’s true, but amazing corroboration nevertheless. What info have you or anyone else been able to dig up on Lumpkin, Gannaway, Stringfellow, etc.? I understand this nexus is the focus of your upcoming presentation in November. I wish I could be there. 

Scott’s observation that this military intelligence presence in Dallas is compatible with Northwoods is really interesting. And it brings something else to mind. If the purpose of the military plotters was to bring about a military solution to Cuba, why would JFK need to die? An unsuccessful attack on his motorcadein Dallas, linked to Castro, would have sufficed, and been compatible with Northwoods. Why kill him? Personally I view this as proof that his killers wanted more than Cuba. But the killers might have hijacked a Northwoods operation and used it as cover. Just a thought. 

[Joseph McBride]

In the 1964 election, George H. W. Bush lost the US Senate race in Texas

to the incumbent, Democrat Ralph Yarborough. Bush ran in concert

with Jack Crichton, who lost the gubernatorial election to the

incumbent, Democrat John Connally.

[Steve Thomas]

51 minutes ago, Joseph McBride said:

In the 1964 election, George H. W. Bush lost the US Senate race in Texas

to the incumbent, Democrat Ralph Yarborough. Bush ran in concert

with Jack Crichton, who lost the gubernatorial election to the

incumbent, Democrat John Connally.

Joe,

 

Chrichton wrote a book about that campaign.

The Republican-Democrat political campaigns in Texas in 1964

Author: Jack Crichton

Publisher: [Texas] : J. Crichton, 2003.

Edition/Format:  Print book : English

Database: WorldCat

https://www.worldcat.org/search?q=au%3ACrichton%2C+Jack.&qt=hot_author

Someday, I'm going to buy that book.

 

Steve Thomas

[Anthony Thorne]

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.

Quote

 

"It was the summer of 1963 in Dallas, and I was busy at that time as President of a private independent oil and gas company, and of a petroleum consulting company. My career up to that time had included attending and graduating from Texas A&M in 1937 with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Petroleum Engineering, and with a commission as a Second Lieutenant in the United States Army Reserve; attending and graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1938 with a Masters Degree in Petroleum Engineering; working during the summers as a laborer in the oil fields of Texas; working as a geologist-engineer in Texas and Louisiana from 1938-1941; serving five years in the U.S. Army, Army Air Corps, Army Intelligence, and Office of Strategic Services (the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency), and being discharged in 1946 as a Major, U.S. Army Intelligence after service in five battle campaigns in Europe. After the military service working for the prestigious consulting firm of DeGolyer and MacNaughton, Dallas, Texas, first as a geologist engineer, then as Vice President and Director until 1950 when I helped form and build up an oil and gas producing firm named San Juan Oil Company, which was sold to General American Oil company two years later at a substantial profit; then heading up a public company called Oil & Gas Property Management, which bought more than $100 million of petroleum properties from 1952 to 1959. The company was sold at a price returning ten for one in equity to its shareholders, and finally establishing my own petroleum and oil and gas company.

In addition, I had married an attractive former Braniff stewardess, had two small daughters, ages eight and ten, had kept up my Army activities and was now a Colonel, U.S. Army Intelligence Reserve. I had also been active in local Republican politics, as had my wife, Marilyn, and in alumni affairs at Texas A&M, and in 1963 was Vice President of the Association of Former Students. I was also concerned about the left wing tilting of the foreign policy of the United States under the Democratic Administration, having personally visited Cuba during Batista's days just before Castro's takeover, and having made speeches in Dallas about Castro's Communist affiliation when he was being hailed as the George Washington of Cuba. I list all these things because they were important factors in my becoming the Republican candidate for Governor of Texas."

 

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

Edited September 5, 2019 by Anthony Thorne